4th of July

We went to the beach for the 4th of July. I know, what were we thinking, right? But it actually wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be. Parking was a pain (to say the least! I had to drop Mando and Nicholas off with the cooler, drive almost two miles away, park, and walk back to the beach along the side of the road. Then, at 5:00 I walked the two miles back to the car, drove it to the beach and parked in one of the now-empty spots until we were finished). When we saw the parking fiasco, we almost turned back and went home. I'm glad we stayed though. Nicholas LOVED it! And south end of the beach was fairly empty, which was a nice surprise.

Wingaersheek is such a fun beach! The water is kidde-pool depth for yards and yards, so Nicholas can run and splash as much as he wants without our help. There are huge rocks that are kind of like islands that you can wade out to and climb on. When the tide goes out, it leaves little pools of water all over so you can often find crabs and other cool things. It's just a great beach for kids!

Nicholas had the most fun doing two things:

1.) Knocking over people's sand castles. All Mando wanted to do on the beach was build a sand castle with Nicholas (he's been talking about it since Nicholas was born). All Nicholas wanted to do was demolish anything Mando built and laugh.

2.) Chasing the seagulls. He ran so fast and so hard trying to catch one of them. I think he would have spent all day chasing them if I hadn't persuaded him to go in the water.

Here he is chasing seagulls...

and here he is looking for more seagulls...

Since Mando was on the beach first (for a good twenty minutes while I was parking the car), he tried to put sunscreen on his back by himself. At the end of the day his back was as red as a lobster except for a few handprints and finger smudges on his shoulders and lower back. In all of our time together I have never seen Mando get sunburned. He just gets darker...sometimes there will be a faint reddish-tint to his dark skin, but within a few hours it's gone and he looks almost black. This time he was RED...like a red-headed gringo. I felt bad for him, but it also made me laugh a little.

Sometimes I like to put the camera on record and pretend that I'm taking a picture because it's just funny to watch them wait for it.  I love how high Nicholas makes his voice to say, "Cheese!"