What's better than a day at the beach?

A day at the beach with a forever friend of course!  

 Could it already have been 15 years since we left our roomie days at Elon?

Last week my college roommate and her family were vacationing at the beach.  And since we live within a reasonable, okay, somewhat reasonable distance from the coast, my kids and I made a day trip to spend some time with them.

Kylie quickly got down to business getting a sand castle area started.  

While perfecting her movie star look of course. 

I'm pretty sure the sunglasses never came off.  Of course, why would they need to when you only get sea water up to your mid-calves.  That's my cautious Kylie.  Not real interested in the waves, but a lover of the sand.

Darcy quickly got down to business checking out the (to our knowledge) largest sandbox she had ever seen.

(I hesitated taking Beth up on her offer to feed us for the day because I hated for Ian to miss Darcy's first beach day.  He said that I'd be crazy not to go, and insisted that as long as there were pictures he'd be fine.  Darcy insisted that she had seen the ocean before, and she did live very near the sea, so possibly her foster mom had already introduced her to the beach anyway...)
Then my daring Darcy showed that she wanted a piece of the action in the waves.  I had to quickly head back to deposit my camera as the shallow water wasn't enough to entertain her long.

And then of course, there was my "let's embrace life and live it to the fullest!" son.

Kamakazi Caleb.  He had Anah and Sera in the water as much as he could.  I'm pretty sure he would have jumped the waves all day if they would have helped him. 
But of course there were holes to be dug and castles to be built.

Not to mention the "pre-shower" time in the pool beside their condo.  My three ran, jumped, dug, swam, and played their hearts out while Beth and I got to sit in sand chairs and catch up on the happenings of our lives.  I was so busy enjoying myself that I only took about 15 pictures.  (Thankfully Beth was much more dilligent and took many more and even made a fun smilebox presentation of our day together).

Caleb apparently gave it all he had.  Because after his shower, even a fresh, hot donut from Britt's (they really were as good as all the hype) that Tim went to pick up for us was hardly enough to rouse him from his slumber. I'm pretty sure he ate the whole thing with his eyes closed...

The only thing that could have made it better would have been if Ian had enough vacation to take the day off and go with us.  Thanks again Beth, Tim, Anah and Sera, we had a blast!