The Pence Boys Go to the Beach!

I have lived in Florida for a little over 12 years now and I've been to the beach maybe 20 times in that period. And when I say 20, I'm being very generous. Seventeen of those times were before I had children. Hunter had been to the beach 2 times with me (besides when Grandma and Grandpa have come down, felt sorry for the kid, and hauled him to the beach sans his scrooge mommy), and Nathanael had NEVER been to the beach! Poor kid.

Translation: Josh and I really, really don't like going to the beach. To illustrate this point further, last week my friend Beth asked me if I'd like to go to the beach with her and I replied, "I think I would rather pluck my eyelashes out one by one with fiery hot tweezers, but thanks so much for the invite!! :)"

For some odd and unknown reason Josh got the wild hair to forget the stinging feeling of salt water in his eyes and on his skin as well as the sand that lingers forever in unmentionable places, and declare that Sunday was family day and he was taking us to the beach. He said that he would do most of the logistical planning as far as food and majors while I just had to get the kids ready, handle their clothes, and wrangle the toys, and that was it! It sounded fine to me, although I was NOT looking forward to it in the least.

We planned to go in the morning in hopes that we'd avoid afternoon rainshowers. We packed up and were on the road by 10:00.

We stopped at Publix to pick up cookout food and a beach chair. I was looking for a beach chair other than the ones that they had on display on top of the endcaps. I asked a stocker in the dairy department a quick, passing by question as to where I could find more and he directed me to customer service. I made a mental note to see the customer service desk before we checked out. A few minutes later we were in the produce section and the dairy stocker guy came to me and said, "Ma'am, what color chair would you like?" I told him green and he went off. A few minutes later we were checking out and he came to me carrying a green beach chair. I was almost moved to tears. Now THAT is customer service, people!! That's also why I don't mind too much that we didnt' use one coupon in our beachy transaction. Publix is just worth a few buys sans coupons every once in a while. Ahhhh.....I love Publix. We loaded up the car again and were off. As we got closer to the beach we noticed very, very gray skies that appeared to be right over the beach. We made a couple phone calls asking for some doppler info and even though the news wasn't in our favor, we continued on.

When we got to the beach and began unpacking under the dark sky a park ranger came by to warn us that they were expecting a pretty bad storm and just wanted to warn us. Despite this, we unpacked our gear into our all-terrain Radio Flyer wagon (which was a KEY component of this excursion not being a disaster) and claimed our spot. We played in the water. Hunter and Nathanael were both afraid and hesitant at first as they learned to keep their balance and not let the waves pushed them over. A couple of face dives, death grips around our necks, and screeches of terror later and they got the hang of it. They played in the sand and Hunter only complained once that the sand was making his butt hurt. Nathanael only took two or three handfuls and shoveled them in his mouth before he figured out that sand did not taste good.

Josh lit up the grill and made some mean organic burgers and had everything all ready when he called us back to eat lunch in the picnic table area. At this point our camera died, so no more pics were taken after lunch. :( Nathanael took a good hour and a half snooze on the towels after lunch, the sky cleared up, and Hunter, Josh and I played in the water for a good hour. We made sandcastles and dodged a vicious looking school of stingray. YIKES! That was scary.

Nathanael woke up to a beautiful, crystal blue sky and we played a while longer. We didn't even look at our watch, but decided to pack it up when Josh felt he was getting a sunburn. After using our trusty wagon to load up we wagoned the kids over to rinse off and then wagoned them naked to the truck to get dressed. THIS is usually the part that I hate, but it wasn't too bad with the wagon. We kept the sand mostly at bay after rinsing off.

Josh made the executive decision to take us to the Royal Scoop afterwards and as we drove Josh and I were shocked to see that it was already 4:00 pm!! We were at the beach for more than 5 hours and actually enjoyed ourselves!! So much so that we agreed to try and go as much as possible until school starts for him. Woah. I have to be honest in that I never, ever thought I would enjoy the beach so much. It was an absolutely LOVELY day and the kids slept great that night with full bellies of chocolate ice cream for dinner. Yay!!