Summertime Fun

Ryan had a day off last week and so we went to  the beach. We've been here almost a year and this is the first time we ventured to the shoreline. It wasn't a perfect trip, as it did rain and cut short our fun a little.  This "time crunch" caused Ryan to pick up seashells willy-nilly (some would say mostly broken). I guess he felt that we needed a certain weight of seashells before we could go back home regardless of the quality of said shells. In the end, we liked visiting the shore so much that we explored another beach on Ryan's next afternoon off.

It was a very harrowing drive along a skinny, skinny road, with the bank of the river and sure death on one side and trees with branches through our windows on the other side. I realized that I don't know how to escape from a vehicle under water and proceeded to make emergency plans in my head. Here we are walking the last bit of the road to the ocean. My nerves couldn't handle the drive any more. 

The sun did brake through for a few moments, and if you look carefully you can see a rainbow behind the girls and me.

 I love the picture below. Particularly Alice's little head poking out the top.

Here we are at the other beach. As you can tell by our apparel, we've become regular beach bums.

The shells at our beaches aren't necessarily the most beautiful you will find, but they are perfect for digging and dumping.

Here are the girls washing off their sandy treasures.

Back at home, it was time to organize the treasures by size, color and shape. These shells are gifts that just keep giving. They are great for collecting rainwater too. As a side note . . . Ryan says he can't wait for the day when Helen is a ultra-cool teenager and he can pull out this picture of Helen in all her 4-year old fashion glory and show it to all her ultra-cool teenager friends.

I couldn't decide which of the following pictures I liked best, so I had to put them both in.

Everything is so green and beautiful right now.

Library day (Thursday) is the best day of the week. I've realized that we have to go once a week, otherwise the kids forget that they need to be quiet and walk instead of run in the library. As another side note, Jane is wearing the dress that I made for her out of one of Ryan's old shirts.