A last minute trip to the beach

We are blessed with wonderful friends who are kind enough to share their beach house with us, so when we heard they were going to be there, we packed up and left later that day.  Whoever invented the portable DVD player is a genius with children, because I don't think we heard a peep from Charlotte the whole time, other than a few potty breaks.

The next morning, we hit the beach with both girls, and it was great...for a while. I assumed that Paige, being the laid back baby she is, wouldn't mind napping while we played.  Wrong!  It ended up being disastrous (at least for this momma's ears and heart) and we tucked tail and ran, alllll the way back home. 

In my mind, the last few hours turned into the whole trip and I wrote it off as a bad one, too soon for a 2 month old.  Luckily, we are also blessed with cameras.  A week or two later, I was looking at the pictures taken and realized how much Charlotte enjoyed her brief time in the sand.  Now I can't wait to try again (and pay better attention to naptime for Paige)!

Here are the pics that changed my heart.  Bear with me, there are alot.  It was really hard to narrow down the plethora that I took!

At the house, getting excited
about the beach

 When we first got to the beach, Charlotte had absolutely no interest in the water.  She was content to play in the sand with her whale and bucket.  She also had absolutely no intentions on wearing her hat, as you can see.

 Paige hung out in the back of the SUV and was happy. (Until she wasn't...)

 

 Finally we got tired of seeing her squating in the sand and Koby led her out to the water.  He had to start by just barely dipping her toes in the water.  Eventually she warmed up to the idea of the waves and brought her duck to play with.

 

She was so pleased with the new game she invented with that silly duck.

 It involved lots of chasing the duck,

 running back to dry sand,

 and throwing the duck back in the water.  And repeat.

 But, in true toddler style, even the coolest duck game got old and I showed her how to dig in the sand at the tide line so the water filled the hole. She was semi impressed.  Mostly she liked to put the sand on her foot.

 Then back to daddy for a bit.

 Eventually she decided she didn't need either one of us to be practically on top of her and braved the shallows alone.  I'm wondering how I'll ever control my fears enough to allow her in the deeper parts alone.

 We ended the trip with the obligatory popsicle, or sicklepople, as Charlotte says. I think it might have been her favorite part.