A Great Beach Day

Well, it warmed up even more today so we were off to the beach. You know it's bad when the midwest is enjoying better weather than Florida, especially over spring break! But we made it to a near eighty today so we were pretty darn pleased with that. The girls were having a blast splashing in the water, until we noticed that there were TONS of jellyfish everywhere! The family next to us caught a few to observe for a some time as well. I genuinely thought the lady who warned the girls of the jellyfish in the water was nuts. I whispered to Hadley, "No, those aren't jellyfish, those are plants!" Um. Yeah. No. The lifeguards blew their whistles shortly thereafter and put up the purple flags to warn the guests and EVERYONE avoided the water like the plague from them on. Oh, ignorance was bliss but it wouldn't have been too blissful if one of us had been tagged by one of those things! Oh well. We continued to have fun gettting buckets of water and playing in the sand. It was also fun to make sure that Raf didn't ingest a shell of some sort. It was truly a game for all of us. Not only will we have fun getting him to ignore the sand this summer, but we'll also have to watch him like a hawk with that pincher grasp of his! He really was SUPER though. I mean he was really incredibly easygoing. If only he could be this great all spring and summer... I'm not counting on such luck, especially when I think of Hadley and Imogen at the beach when they were this age, but I can always hope, right?

I had Eric meet us with the camera to take pictures of this glorious day shortly before we left. Again, things were going well and we avoided the family throwing buckets of water at each other with our camera. Then Eric was taking a few of Raf and I and getting ready to put it away when the girls, who were playing tag, kicked water right at it. This last picture is of me getting into position to take a picture with the baby. You can guess what happened next.... I think it's going to be okay, but I think the big camera will not be coming for our next visit. Phew! I was sick about it. Hopefully, this is a lesson learned. Now, it's time to get some shots of Rafferty out of the water because, after all, he is eight months today!!!