Vacation! part the second - the beachening

Our time in NH/ME came with hours and hours of beach time.  It turns out that we have two sand and saltwater loving beach bums on our hands.

Fric and Frac got ready lickety split on Monday AM and were ready to go, lined up at the door to our hotel room in anticipation.  There were many oohs and ahhhs from passersby in the hotel lobby to boot.

Upon arrival, new sand toys were unpacked

Much sunscreen was applied

Sand was played with immediately

Many holes were dug

little holes

BIG HOLES

Teamwork was employed

Elbow grease applied

Many shovels utilized

Harper was not intimidated by the grown-up shovel

For a change of pace Mom dug a trench and built a mound

Harper Containment Strategy (tm)

They were SO PLEASED with themselves

The ol' "hey, Luke, see how many buckets of water it takes to fill this hole" trick

And we all spent A LOT of time in the ocean

There was a lot of "wave" jumping

and frolicking

and general cavorting

And especially lots of this

and this

and this

and more still of this

We had to keep an eye on our little mermaid, Harper

Who LOVED THE OCEAN.  She even picked up the world "ocean" - "Harper go in ocean. Beach."

But don't worry, we didn't let her get too far...

This was part of an elaborate "Life Guard" game - the shovel and rake were required for sea rescues

AHHHHH SAAAAND! YAYYYY!

"I CANNOT STOP BECAUSE I LOVE IT SO MUCH"

(a direct quote from Luke)

Snack break!

Picnic lunch!

Picnic chit chat

Harper loved having us make sand castles with the molds "I READY! I READY FOR ! PUT RIGHT HERE!"

And fortunately found it hilarious when her brother would immediately SMOOSH them flat

Harper was happiest when coated in sand from head to toe

And everything in between

 

Drip castles helped this along

As did just rolling around in it

I really mean it...

From head...

 ...to toe

 

 

And when we got home, we missed the beach so much that we tried to approximate it in Ossining's scorching heat & humidity on Saturday...

 

 ...not quite the same, but the kids still loved it.

We can't wait to pick a beach for next year!