The Beach

Some friends from church invited us to go camping at the beach with them, so we said YES!!!!  This is a pic of the kids on the way there.  We went to North Padre Island.  It was beautiful and we had lots of fun!

Here is my bearded man.  Love him!

We went with a family who had a teenage son and daughter and another family who had a little girl and boy my kids' ages.  Here is kyler, Luke and Tyce playing in the sand.  I kept thinking they would eventually get sick of the sand and sun, but no!  They loved it the whole time.
 

I had a hard time getting my kids to take a picture, but Laney would pose for me!  Here is Laney and Brek.

Laney and Tyce

And all of my kids and Laney.

All of the little ones.  None of them would look at me!  Stinkers.

Tyce and Brek

Luke getting me!

Tyce and Brek

That night Brock did a little treasure hunt for the kids.  They loved it!  Here they are starting the hunt...

The treasure hunt took them under the landing where there was a big hole they had to get into.  I was a bit nervous.  But Brek and Laney got in and it wasn't as deep as I thought!

In the hole

They had to hop, sidestep, and run throughout the treasure hunt.  Here they are running to me.

X marks the spot!

Dig for the buried treasure!

And the loot!

Sometimes I am a little OCD about dirt and being dirty, and that night I started getting that way about the whole experience.  We were covered in sand and there was no way it was coming off.  We went up to the showers and rinsed off, then straight into the tent (pitched in the sand).  So yeah.  We didn't get all of the sand off, but it wasn't too bad.  Brock went off to fish in the night with the sharks while I laid down with the kids.  Luke would not lay down to go to sleep.  He kept saying "Daddy" and looking for Daddy.  Then he got Tyce all hyper and he wouldn't lay down!  Finally, (probably 2 hrs later) the kids all fell asleep.  I kept waking up all night with kids rolling and jamming their legs/arms/faces into me.  At some point, I smelled pee and thought oh great.  Well, nothing to do about it now.  In the morning, it turns out both Tyce and Brek had wet the bed!  Lovely.  

So of course Luke is up at literally the crack of dawn.  We were told that they would be releasing baby sea turtles at 6:30 AM, so I rolled over and asked Brock what time it was.  6:25.  So what the heck.  We're already up.  Let's go be awake for a reason.  I have to admit, it was so beautiful and peaceful walking along the beach at dawn. 

Here is the fam minus me walking to the sea turtles

Tyce and his belly button watching the turtles

Tons of people were there!!!!  We couldn't really see anything.  Just specks making their way to the ocean.

Some lady who was in charge took people's cameras to take pictures of the baby sea turtles.  I sent mine with her and got these cute pictures.

On the way back to camp.  I LOVE this picture!

I kept trying to get Tyce to go up with them so he could be in the picture, but he refused.

Tyce still refusing to look at the camera

There's my cute Tyce smiling for me!

Still not tired of the sand...

We had a lot of fun, but we have learned our lesson about camping on the beach...Don't do it with small children! :)  Jk.  It really was lots of fun.  You just have to be ready to be sandy with no chance of getting clean.  We were burnt and tired, but we had a blast!