The Trip; Part Two

The second day of our trip, we went to the beach-- probably one of our family's favorite places to be. When we arrived, the kids immediately began to enjoy their surroundings.

There was touching of sand...

..gathering of shells and rocks..

..running up to the water...

.. and turning to flee from the encroaching waves.

But mostly there was just a lot of random digging.

Rophone bought the boys some awesome long handled shovels. Awesome, but a bit unwieldy.

I was slightly worried that they might brain each other.

At one point, while the boys were standing opposite one another attempting to dig a hole, Big brought the tip of his sand-loaded shovel straight up into Bud's nose, packing it full of sand. Luckily, Rophone soon had the boys organized and working on digging a big hole. Supervision of boys with big shovels makes all the difference. Trust me on this.

After the boys had dug a deep enough hole, Rophone informed them that now their task was to fill it with water. Those of you with kids (especially boys!) know that all a kid needs is a mission. They set about their assigned duty with gusto.

They walked to the water and filled their buckets to the brim...

..and then shlepped the overflowing bucket back to the hole...

..where they dumped it.

Over...

..and over..

.. and over.

If you look closely, you can see the sand that was a constant ooze from Bud's nostrils. His nose leaked sand for several days, actually, and I'm pretty sure there is still some up there today, a week later-- this is why we blow our noses, kids!

It's at times like these that I really feel for my friend, Mr. Incredible. The poor man is unable to blow his nose. He just doesn't have the gift. I'll pray his nose never gets packed full of sand, the poor, poor man.

It didn't take Pen and Ginger very long to look down and figure out that the hole wasn't filling with water, so they abandoned their efforts to do other things.

But not the boys. They kept hauling...

... and dumping.

Over and over again. I think they did it for close to an hour.

I'm pretty sure they just about drained the ocean. Down to its last drop.

It was so great to see Pen smiling and happy.

For one whole afternoon, Fine! was nowhere to be found. I'll take that.

We may have left only a fleeting impression on the beach,

but the impression the beach left on us is most certainly an indelible one.