Day at the coast

It had been several weeks since Bruce and I had gone surfing (and several months for the kids) so when wind and waves made for reasonable surfing this weekend, we were off!

The surf was pretty small which made for great practice waves for Chris and Sarah. Chris finally understood why we swim lots of laps at the pool (because paddling is HARD). They both paddled and caught waves and even got to their knees. Sasha and Erika got into the action as well, although they had help more help from mom. They learned the finer points of body surfing from the older kids.

We found two live starfish. Erika found the first one in the beach surf and carried it around the rest of the day, occasionally dipping it in the water to keep it alive. Sarah came up from body surfing a wave with one stuck to her shoulder. She had it in her hand for a few minutes and went to show Chris. She freaked out when she went to put it in her other hand and it had suckered itself to her hand. Imagine Sarah shaking her arm wildly screeching "aack! aaack! aaack!" When Sarah finally pried it off, several little suckers had been ripped from its poor little body. No doubt from the death grip necessitated by Sarah's frantic shaking. She said she tried looking to see where they came from but couldn't (can't imagine why not - there are probably only a few thousand suckers).

An early start and several hours frolicking at the beach made everyone tired. We weren't on the road 15 minutes before all 4 kids were sleeping (the red blob is Erika sleeping face planted on her lap with her hoodie up).