Mega Beach Day: Monday, May 19

I've decided that I'll upload videos later since there are a few more steps to that and I...miss my desktop setup. So for now pictures will have to do. 

We spent the entire day at the beach on Monday. Grandpa and Darla headed out to the beach with the littler ones as soon as they got up in the morning—which was quite early because the sun rises at 5:45 am (and not until 6:30 in Atlanta). The sunset feels early as well. And I'm still trying to figure out the tides because...what is happening tomorrow? Some kind of reset button or something?

Here are the tides for Panama City Beach:

Look how small the difference is between the high and low tide! We have hardly been able to notice when (and whether) the tide is changing—it only comes in/out 2 feet over the course of the entire day! 

La Jolla, California, sees increases of six feet sometimes in only 6 hours or so. 

I honestly have no idea how to read the change in feet. But the difference does seem more dramatic at La Jolla than here in Panama City Beach. Same thing at Wilmington, NC:

I didn't know that tides in The Gulf were so different from our oceans. We haven't had to pick up and move camp while we've been here, as we typically have to do at an ocean-beach where we can literally watch the tide come in and recede. It's interesting...and a little off-putting. We can't tell the time by the tides like we're somewhat used to doing when we go to the beach. 

So despite my best efforts several children burned on Monday. 

We just spent so much time out there without feeling like time was passing at all!

But we had fun (and have been more diligent about hats and reapplications of sunscreen since).

Here's a cool castle the boys worked on:

Zoë came over to help after she swam for a little while. The waves were so calm this day, and the water so clear, that swimming was quite a lot of fun! The kids put on goggles and seemed determined to stay under the water for as long as they possibly cold (we should have brought snorkeling gear or something). They kept popping up with beautiful shells (sometimes full of hermit crabs or other things) and had a great time. But...here they are out of the water, building a castle:

Phoebe, who had been so happy to be on the beach Saturday and Sunday was...a bit of a grump on Monday. She didn't want to do anything but swim at the pool.

Eventually she got her way and we all took a break to rinse off and swim at the pool instead of at the beach.

Here she is, the cocky little baby:

I think Daddy had a meeting on Monday morning, so he wasn't at the beach with us then. Or Tuesday morning. And he won't be at the beach with us on Thursday morning, either. He's only 50% on vacation...but he's still teaching over the summer so there's no such thing as a real vacation.

Here's Miriam, probably happy about a shell she'd found:

That little tiny house surrounded by those huge houses is our entrance to the beach. It's the pool house from the beach house we're renting (which is actually across the street from the pool house). To get to the beach we have to go through three different gates with codes (fortunately it's the same code for each gate...but still).

It was also important for Phoebe to make a "sand angel" because she'd seen her siblings do it in the beach book I talked about earlier. Their influence transcends time, it seems. 

Here's Zoë having a rest on Grandpa's lap:

I was going to say that she's probably sitting on his lap because we forgot our beach chairs at home—and that's true! We did forget our beach chairs at home. But Darla and Grandpa brought five chairs with them (thank goodness)...and you can see that there's a purple chair open to the right of Darla. So I think Zoë was just sitting on Grandpa to sit on Grandpa. And that's okay, too.

Here's Zoë trying to make Grandpa look at the camera:

And succeeding:

Oh, look! Another sand angel picture:

Here's some sweet pictures of Rachel and Phoebe snuggling:

These pictures sort of remind me of this photo of the two of them from July 2022 (I didn't ever blog about this day at the pool, but this has been my phone's background since then):

And once again I'm terrified to lose this dynamic—because these two love each other so much! I know they won't stop loving each other just because Rachel's going off to college, but their dynamic will change.

Anyway...Benjamin loves to build sandcastles. I don't think he'll ever outgrow it (his father certainly hasn't).

And here he is stumbling out of the water to show me a cool shell:

The water was just so calm and clear (I'm not sure I can emphasize that enough). After Andrew showed up we all went out and passed a (Nerf) football around, standing chest-high in the water and were hardly ever knocked over by the waves (this would not be the case later on in the week).

The piddly little things weren't very good for boogie boarding, but really the water was quite lovely!

Oh, and here's Benjamin showing off his friend Romeo...a dead opossum that he named. Romeo stunk to high heavens! He was on the road first (which is clearly where he met his end), but the friendly neighbourhood vultures moved him onto the sidewalk (as you see here) and then eventually dragged him off into the bushes. He still stinks there, but at least we don't have to see him (and the smell is greatly improved since yesterday):