Like Sands Through the Hourglass

I think I mentioned a few blogs ago that we went to the beach. It was massively windy and the Gulf of Mexico was rough. The water was the color of chocolate milk. It was exhausting for the grown-ups, but the little to medium-sized people enjoyed the heck out of it.

Last week we loaded up the bus, grabbed the 5 kids and the grandpa, hooked up the can, and went to the beach, again. And look at it now. Same beach, same Gulf of Mexico. Same kids and everything. If I were a better writer, or if I were in the mood, I guess I would get all blabby about how this is life...sometimes stormy and sometimes calm. But I'm not, and I'm not. So....

We stay at an RV "resort" that is really quite nice. Great pools and clean bathrooms and showers and a boardwalk to the beach.

But this is a Texas beach - so yeah - we share the sand dunes with a herd of cattle. They grazed about 10 feet behind our camper among the sea oats covering the dunes. You can see some rather lovely beach homes in the background. Our little people think nothing of having a herd graze directly behind their sleeping heads...that is pretty much how they go to sleep every night, anyway.

I mentioned there's a boardwalk, and if we were normal people we would just walk over it to get to the beach. But we're not. We have to take way too much stuff for that. So we load up the bus, exit out of the park, drive down the highway to a beach access road, enter the beach, and drive back down in the direction we came from to get to the boardwalk so if anyone has to use the bathroom they can quickly walk back to the trailer. I know....silly. But you see all the stuff right? We're talking 8 chairs, an ice chest, an EZ Up (whoever thought up that name for the shade tent thing we put up was freaking HILARIOUS), boogie boards, skimmer boards, sand castle building paraphernalia, twenty or so paperbacks....you can see the impossibility of our casually strolling to the beach. In our defense, most of the people who stay at this park own irritating little golf carts that they buzz around on (sporting Confederate flags).

The writing on the rear windshield? Is left over from the World Odyssey trip to Michigan we took in MAY. I asked Joel to clean it off and he almost did. So that's where we are with that....And below is the cataclysmically difficult to set up EZ Up. That's where the lower class hangs out....Sad, really, that they are reduced to huddling beneath it...

And this is where I sit. Although I wish I had a picture of what it looked like 10 minutes after this. The 3 youngest dragged their seats over and we had some togetherness....sheesh...that is how they operate. They do the same thing at home. I'm always like, "Dudes, we have 3,000 sq feet in this house so why do you always have to be in the same one as me?" What can I say? They adore me.

When they weren't showing their love for me by asking for food or beverages....they were working on their sand castle. Jules had drawn up blueprints the night before, so they had a plan.

Massive impressive and all.

The architects.

Me - I told you it was red. It is hard to believe all those little brown bodies somehow got assigned to me, isn't it? I am definitely the palest person in our party.

I'm thinking this might be the fewest words I've ever posted. That's your reward for getting through the last post!

Signing Off as a Sandy Sardine Mama