Happy 4th of July!!

Every year, my in-laws rent a condo at the coast for the week of the 4th of July.  The kids loooove being able to go and spend time there with them because there is a dock to fish and crab from, several beaches a short drive away, a fun historical downtown with little shops to pick through, and a pool to splash in.  Also, the city puts on a large fireworks show for all to enjoy.  In years past, we have spent the night, but this year work schedules did not allow that, so we woke up early and headed out to start our fun day.  First thing we did once we got there...beach time!

 After taking a wrong trail to the beach which involved Malachi sinking into and losing his flip flops in thick mud (oy), we finally got down to the sand.  We found this little pool of water immediately after getting onto the beach and the kids decided this was where they wanted to play.  We could barely see the waves!!  We let them play for a while and Malachi got his mud slinging out of the way! 

Poor thing had a runny nose from the wind and her hair wouldn't stay out of her face so in no time flat she had sand all over her mouth and cheeks.  But she looked pretty silly! ;)

Malachi has been begging to fly this kite for months, so was super excited to finally have enough wind!

He literally flew it for 3 minutes and was done.  Hopefully that will stop the whining! :)

We finally convinced him to go down to the waves.

  Oh how I love them! 

Running!!!!!

 Of course we brought diggers!

 Happy dirty boy!

 This bird was convinced we had something for him and stared us down for quite a while.

We weren't able to spend as much time as we had wanted since the wind was blowing the sand around and the sand fleas kept biting.  We headed back to the condo and the kids got an opportunity to go down to the dock with Daddy and Papa and play on a play structure.  We waited until after supper to go swimming to kill time before the fireworks started at 10 pm.  Last year at this time in the pool, Malachi was clinging to his pool noodle (also wearing his life vest of course!) and would shriek if I let up on my hold on him.  This year, he was swimming and kicking with out assistance and was willing getting his head wet.  Sapphira just wanted to be held in the water and didn't really do much more than splash with her hands last year, but my what a year did for this little daredevil!  She was jumping off the side of the pool into some one's arms, laying and floating on her back, swimming on her belly while being held from person to person and was asking to bob under water.  I think I need to get my little fishies in lessons sooner than later! After getting out of the pool, the kids played with their cousins while waiting as patiently as they could for the show to start.  We had been misinformed about which part of the bay the fireworks were being set of from, so the bottom half of the fireworks ended up being blocked by another condo building but we could still see quite a bit of the show.  Sapphira kept asking every one if they liked the colors or sounds and if they liked the big or little sounds better. :)  We ended up getting home at 1:15 in the morning, so while we were so tired on Thursday morning, we were thankful for our fun-filled day.