Our First Full Day at the Beach

What a great day we've had! Everything here is warm & beautiful: the sun, the sand, the emerald-green Gulf water... even the pool feels like you're stepping into a cozy warm jacuuzi (sans bubbles, of course)! Here's a few pictures of how we enjoyed ourselves today:

Here's Chris & Caroline having a morning swim. It didn't take Caroline long to decide that ocean swimming is the way to go!

Then, after swim-time comes sand-time! The degree to which these girls repeatedly coated themselves with the white stuff - front and back, ears to toes - sincerely surprised me. Perhaps not so much Caroline, but...

...Jordi is a girl who, at home in Ashland, prefers not to get her hands dirty when playing outside. Well, look at her now! (I don't have a picture of it, but at one point she was actually laying down & making sand angels! Yikes!)

This picture tells a cute story. Towards the end of the day, Uncle Al decided it would be a good idea to give each of the girls a turn at getting buried in the sand; he covered their legs and then patted the sand into the shape of a mermaid tail. Well, Caroline was on board immediately with this since pretending to be a mermaid is second only to pretending to be a kitty at this point in her life. She liked it so much, in fact, that she let him continue to cover her right up to her shoulder, all the while maintaining an unusual zen-like countenance. It was really weird! Then, she was so upset when it was time to finally get un-buried. (Who knows? maybe it really does feel that good!) Looks like Uncle Al is going to have to put covering his niece in sand on his vacation's daily to-do list!!