Travel

I don’t know why I dread sand. I always loved playing in it when I was a kid. I remember my dad made me a huge sandbox right behind our house that took a whole dumptruck load of sand to fill up. My brother and I played for hours in the sand either playing with trucks and tractors or cooking up a whole array of foods with sand as the primary ingredient.

Now though, I’m responsible to keep things clean, so it has changed my whole perspective on sand. I think it’s the thought of sand in the shoes, sand in the hair, sand in people’s ears, sand in the bedsheets at night, sand in the car, sand everywhere, that I don’t get too excited about. Last week, my sister-in-law decided we should take seven cousins to go play at a beach on the Oregon Coast. It was fun! I enjoyed taking pictures of the kids playing to their hearts content. It was good for the kids too, because they don’t care if there is sand in their hair or in their bed or wherever. They just get to be one with the sand and that’s what matters. (They all did have to take showers that night, because they had sand everywhere, in their hair, in their ears, you name it. I managed to only get it between my toes, but I probably didn’t have as much fun as they did. Although taking pictures is a favorite of mine, so maybe I did.)

Some of the kids dug a deep hole. JD Boy wanted to show how deep the hole was. (You might notice that he has a splint on his left hand. He fractured his hand about a week ago while roller blading.)

Baby just loved throwing the sand. She just scooped up sand and threw it and repeated the process over and over. She was in sand heaven.

She also found it challenging to climb the sand hills. She always was asking me to pick her up and carry her, but instead, I stood there and took pictures of her struggling. She doesn’t look too bad for the struggle. It was good for her.

The older girls enjoyed turning the sand dunes into a gymnasium. They jumped. They whirled. They flipped. They cartwheeled. They loved the soft landing.

Not far from Everglades National Park is the Big Cypress National Preserve. We took a nice walk there and spotted a Limpkin at the end of the walk. At this park, we didn’t see tons of wildlife, we just enjoyed family time. That’s important too!

The whole gang.

View from the end of the boardwalk.

Rosario Beach is one of my favorite spots in the world. (If you’ve followed my blog or Facebook long, you already knew that.) We recently made an unplanned trip there. We just zipped over there, because we had tried to see something not far away that didn’t work out.

We did all the usual stuff that we like to do there. We went searching for those perfectly round smooth stones to use as skipping rocks. Then we had a try to see who get manage the most skips. Those of us that are beginners spent more time practicing and honing our skill, so that we won’t stay beginners forever.

My boys think they are monkeys that have been moved to the wrong continent. They love climbing. At Rosario there is this one specific root that they always climb. It started when I was pregnant with G’tums. I have many pictures of them at different ages climbing that root. Someday I’m going to compare the series to show how they’ve grown compared to the root. This time it was in church clothes, no less.

We climbed rocks.

Climbed stumps.

Ran down trails.

Sat down for a break.

Went tide-pooling in search of the coolest hermit crab in the neighborhood.

Gave Grandpa a thorough lesson in nature study.

Hollered for the fun of it.

And visited with family that had come to visit.

Rosario beach is always a fun place to go. This trip was no exception!