Alabama! (day 6)

Thursday, 8/7/14

We started out on the beach... girls sorting their shells.

And we started making a sandcastle! Not just any sandcastle...

A huge one! Donnie brought down a real shovel for this very thing... evidently using a bucket to dig just takes too long ;)

I was in love with the buckets that Mimi bought at Dollar General. They were miniature castles themselves and if you packed the sand down with just the right combination of sand/water, they were perfect... not even a crack to be seen. :)

I love this picture...

After it was built the girls decided to decorate it with shells!

Carson found the flags and put them on the top! It lasted all day, not a person or the tide took it down... The tide the next morning finally erased it.

Mermaid castles I believe... wet sand that they dripped and piled up :) pretty cool, yes?

We were very proud of it :)

Here you can see the different buckets we used... and there were more to be bought! Watch out next time we come, I'm going to get one of every style :)

This was also the day of the mussles...again, leave it to Lydia. She says to me in the morning, "come on Mom! Let's dig for mussles!" And I say, "pretty sure they don't come out until the evening." (As I had seen an older girl collecting a bunch but the evening before) Lydia promptly came back with, "Mom! You can find them anytime... come on, come see!"

And sure enough... she was right. She sat down and starting digging... and she found one, and then another, and then another! I was enticed, so I started in too! And they were the funniest creatures I have ever seen! Why did I not take video of it? I have no idea... but I did not lack on pictures this day ;)

They were all different sizes, colors & shapes and small as you can see. And what made them so funny was how they would bury/dig themselves into the sand to get away. This teeny-tiny shell was alive and moving. So funny! We even had races, b/c some were slower than others... hilarious, really.

And so the count was on...

Piles of 10 were made :)

This was also the evening that mom & dad were going out to eat, and we had decided to order pizza in... so Chris & I kept all the girls on the beach until 7pm(ish?)... I could have done that every night. The life.

Not crowded, not too hot...

And as I mentioned before..

the ocean is magical, LeaAnn thinks so :) She was dancing ...

and singing to the ocean... life doesn't get much better than this.

They continued on and on...

the goal being 1000 mussels!

Lydia was singing too! I just adore this picture! So happy I captured the moment...

And then they made up this dance/handshake...

They even let Lydia & LeaAnn join in.

they ran to the ocean...

and did it all over again... I just kept snapping away :)

it was SO cute...

and they were having a ball with it...

The mussle counting resumed and Chris had to take a phone call ;)

And they did it. 1000+ muscles actually.

Lindsay picked up the camera :)

She was so sweet about it :)

I thought they were just about ready to go in, but they snacked a bit and found some more energy.

And what did Ms. Lydia find?

A starfish!

All on her own :)

Ahahaha! Love their face expressions... exactly how it went down ;)

One of the first days we were on the beach a lady next to us had found a bunch of them... told us how to kill & preserve them, but we didn't do it. I don't know why, they are just fish. It's just hard to look at them as 'just fish' b/c they are so unique. She did tell us though that the starfish are harmful if there are too many.  Just like any other animal if there are too many... they eat too much corral, and then the creatures depending on it don't have it... the chain of life I guess. Maybe next time we'll be braver to 'preserve' a few.

We finally did pack up and leave the beach... but it sure was hard to do. :) Mimi & Pap had an amazing dinner experience & food (hopefully we'll go there next time too!) and we let the kids go night swimming in the lazy river :) Another. perfect. day.