Surf's Up Dude!

We have been hitting the beach & loving it! So far the weather has been incredible! We also have a friend of Murray's from university here with his family, hanging out with us & the girls are having a blast with their 3 kids. It's been late bedtimes 3 nights in a row with very very busy days. We were down at the beach for about 4 hours yesterday & again today in the full sun so I'm not sure how much longer they can maintain this kind of pace before something gives. I bet it's not much longer though so we'll have to try getting them down earlier tomorrow or the rest of the vacation could go down the tubes in a hurry! It is hard to drag them away from the action though and even when you do, they can hear it all clear as a bell since all the noise carries easily in this cottage. It also stays light out til 10pm so they don't really believe it's bedtime at 8, 8:30 or even 9! Rick & Nancy didn't come to celebrate the girls' actual birthday this year and decided to have a cottage birthday party instead & we did that last night. They'd already gotten their main present (pool for the backyard) but Nancy made them each a cake (plus a couple for the rest of us!) and still a few little other things. One of them was a science experiment involving mints & a bottle of diet Pepsi. When the mints dropped into the 2L bottle, the pop shoots up in a geyser straight into the air. The kids could have watched this a dozen times I think. Nancy went through two bottles of pop with Rick muttering "biggest waste of pop I'v ever seen!". Not a man of science apparently!

After supper tonight we took the kids for a walk down to the main beach and they had fun racing and running all over, wading through the water to get to the islands etc.

Honey has had a terrible time with the hermit crabs. She is TERRIFIED of them! Last night she woke up hollering for me, "Help! Mummy!!!! Help!" I got in there & the poor little thing was lying on her back with her knees pulled up to her chest, crying her eyes out, saying "the hermit crabs are going to get me!!!" I calmed her down and thought she'd fallen back asleep & started to slip away when she clasped on to my arm and said "DON'T leave me please!!!" This was at 12:30am so when I laid down with her "for just a minute" I was a goner! I woke up awhile later & got back to my own room eventually. Today she got a lot braver and let us carry her out in to the water and hold her so she could practice swimming. On the walk after dinner, she was eventually racing through the tide pools on her own so hopefully she'll be able to sleep tonight!


Sweetie was getting ready for story time when she noticed the bright orange ball of sun setting in the sky. She ran & grabbed Grampy and insisted he come out to watch it with her. All 3 girls ended up going & he felt quite special that they wanted to do that with him. He loves a good sunset anyway but sharing it with three beautiful girls must be a lot better!

Daddy & Lovey checking out the big bad hermit crabs down below!

The kids borrowed these water wings & were thrilled to swim around! It took some convincing to get them to give them up for the next person's turn when it was time. Might have to invest in a couple pairs of these. I'd been avoiding them as I was afraid they'd get too dependent on them & refuse to give them up & learn to swim on their own.