More Days at the Beach

My week started out like this:

A do-it-yourself haircut by a four year old (who shall remain nameless) and who, as luck would have it, is having family pictures made next week.....


To walking in to a colossal mess made the night before by the same nameless four year old who decided it would be fun to dissect the styrofoam filled carnival prize tiger her dad won for her last week. The stuff was everywhere. I took this picture after the majority of it was cleaned up.

So needless to say, by Friday I was really ready for this:

We rented a beach house at Surfside Beach from one of Chris' co-workers and went with the DeCarlos. The house was really nice and was really close to the beach. The beach was pretty clean and didn't smell, something I didn't think was possible at a Texas beach.

Friday night, not ten minutes after we put the kids to bed, there was a big thud and Clara started crying. Chris ran into the room and she was face first on the hard floor, completely wrapped up in her bedding unable to move. She got a bloody nose and it was swollen a bit. She got a little tlc and ice and some tylenol and was good as new by morning, though it's still sore to the touch. She wasn't happy during the sunscreen applications.

We all went down to the beach and played Saturday morning. Travis and Clara had a great time and Justin loved sitting in the water getting splashed by waves. We came back to the house for lunch and Clara had been acting just fine, not sick at all. She ate a strawberry at the end of her lunch and a couple of minutes later, she threw up her entire lunch.

So, I'm officially moving strawberries from her list of suspected allergies to her list of confirmed allergies. She's been going back and forth for a couple of months now on whether or not she'll eat them and I guessed she probably was having some sensitivity to them. Sometimes she asks for them and other times she says she doesn't like them, so I guess they're out now.

The older two got to go back to the beach for a little while while the hamburgers were grilling. Randy and Danielle had to leave Saturday after dinner, but we stayed until this afternoon. Clara brought Daddy breakfast in bed this morning for Father's Day, along with the card she made him and we hit the beach one more time before cleaning up and heading home.

It was a fun and relaxing weekend and hopefully we'll be back soon. I've never really just loved the beach all that much, but I now know that's because it's always been a day trip for us. Having a house to walk back to and clean up at makes all the difference in the world. Being able to come back home after an hour or so and have lunch and a nap was wonderful! And showering right after getting off the beach was wonderful! As was getting into a car without tracking in sand and stinking it up like ocean.