A Day at the Beach

I awoke this morning with a short person announcing, “Mom. Wake up. It’s 9-8-7. Time to go to the beach.” Boy, how time gets away from you. I had no idea I had slept in so late.

We spent a few hours on the beach, soaking in the rays that periodically snuck through the clouds.  When the rain started to fall, we decided to go in for lunch and a nap. (Well, some of us napped, others impatiently tapped their toes.)

Finally, as the rain had ceased, we decided that we should go back out to enjoy the rest of the day on the beach.

My eight year old promptly planted herself within the tide line and proceeded to dig a hole, searching for ancient shells of species never seen before. (Glad to know that the museum of natural history had some effect.) Being within the tide line, the hole became increasingly difficult to maintain. The dig was beginning to take on the urgency of a fire fighter fighting a great inferno. Even the 3 year old saw that this was not worth continuing, so he rallied me for an invigorating game of ‘Ready Set Go’, in the waves. I remember once playing this game with my father in the waves, but when I played, I was the Jumper. This game started off, completely unruly. Jumps were random, making it impossible to not fall over. I had to inform him of the proper rules to this ocean game.

The point is to avoid the hit of the waives, or the foam that it produces. And since the point is not to pull moms arms out of her shoulder sockets, there has to be some sort of warning prior to jumps. So, we set the pace as “Ready, Set, Go…” jump. In reality, I would say, “Ready, Set, Go”, and he would continue to jump at his own pace.

Back at the dig… With water filling the whole periodically, the eight year old was increasingly frustrated. Not one to accept defeat, she decided to go with the flow and build “another ocean”.

After a good 30 minutes straight of ‘Ready, Set, Go’, the game never loosing its excitement, we had to call it due to rain.

All in all Myrtle Beach has been quite the success. Maybe some day, we’ll be able to come back, maybe even without the rain. (And that’s the last time you’ll ever hear me say that about rain.)