AmaraLand

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Amara spent the night with us last Saturday night and she really wanted to go to the beach on Sunday morning. The beach just wasn’t in the plans for the day so she settled for playing in the water in the front yard and we had a blast but it did get me to thinking… So I asked her Mom if I could pick her up from school on Wednesday. Wednesdays are always early off days and she gets out at 1:15 leaving plenty of time for…

An afternoon at the beach!

Jenna told her that there would be a surprise after school but she wouldn’t give her a clue what it was. When she got out of class and saw me waiting to pick her up she asked, “Where’s Mommy?” and she had that look of what’s going on. I answered “Mommy’s at home. Do you want to go do something fun?” “What?” “We’re going to the beach!” Her eyes lit up but before she could even say anything her teacher overheard me and said, “You’re going to the beach TODAY?” This made Amara even more excited! When she found out Mommy and I had been planning this for days and she didn’t know — she was extra thrilled. She told me Mommy looked like she was up to something!

The beach is only 14 miles but it did seem like it took us hours to get there. I had packed us a lunch, frozen some extra water and had blankets, towels, bathing suits and sunscreen ready! Oh, I wish you could have seen her put on sunscreen!!! She had big white smears of it under her chin and on her legs!

The weather was perfect! The water was so blue; I just love the reflection on the water. I had picked the perfect day. The parking lot was almost empty and we shared the beach with maybe a dozen other people and a million seagulls! She could hardly wait to get in that water!

I took her little boogie board and a beach ball for her to play with. It was so funny — right after we got there we were playing with the beach ball and it got away from her! The wind just kept it rolling in front of her far enough that she couldn’t get it! She ran almost back to the car — it is a long walk from the parking lot down to the water! And I couldn’t stop laughing! It was like one of those videos where they have something on a string and they just keep pulling the object out of reach – that was Amara and her beach ball! Finally, some nice lady saw her dilemma and was able to intercept it for her. We took all the stuff out of the beach bag and stuffed the ball in there so it couldn’t get away again.

Amara and I had so much fun in the waves! My pictures are limited, as I had to leave the cameras on the blanket for fear of death by drowning, the camera not us. I’m so glad I brought her boogie board, keep in mind it is the kids’ version and is very small. She would stand on it as the waves hit her and hold my hand to keep it from dragging her away! It didn’t float but the undertow would undermine the sand and tug at the board, sometimes turning it completely around — with her standing on it! She would squeal with delight. I grinned so much my face hurt! Later she tried laying on it and just letting the waves (almost) hit her! Sometimes her board would float up a little and there were more squeals of delight!

I had packed a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches (she loved that I quartered it because “you can eat it faster that way Grandma”!) and chocolate pudding. Jenna provided a baggy full of Cheetos for her and when she was done with lunch she was going to leave the bag on her blanket so she could finish them later. I told her that seagulls are so brazen that they will steal an unopened bag of chips, drag them down the beach, open them and share them with their friends. She was very skeptical that this had ever happened but we put the Cheetos in my lunchbox just to be safe. She was sitting on the beach building a sand castle later when a seagull raided the blanket of the people just down the beach from us. It pulled a partial loaf of bread out of the plastic grocery bag and was dragging it down the beach when I saw it and rescued the bread. The people were very appreciative and Amara missed the whole thing!

When we’d enough of the waves for a while, we buried each other in the sand! Well my feet and her up to her belly! I made her lay with half of her body on her blanket, as I really didn’t want her laying that hair in the sand. OMG, by the time we left she was a ball of sand! We must have gotten to the beach about 2 PM and we left at 4:30 but it was just the best. Amara kept saying we have to do it again. And we do. Next time we will take buckets and shovels and stuff so that she can have even more fun building sandcastles.

But the next time will NOT be this weekend. I explained to her that Memorial Weekend is the biggest beach weekend of the year and that it is bumper-to-bumper bodies and that we would not be among them — but I have a feeling she will be begging to go next Wednesday when she has early out.

Maybe!