May Beach Trip- Take 2

In April we were invited to go with my parents to a fun beach house that we have been to before. It belongs to an associate of my dad's. Right on the beach in Oceanside, it's a great little getaway retreat and we love to go. Even though we have a pretty scary story from that place too...

Oh, ok! I'll tell the story :) It's a good one. We were down on the beach on a 100 degree day in May two years ago. Cheryl (pregnant with Luke) and Ken with Katelyn and Ethan, Mom and Dad and me and our three kids at the time (Cliff was working) were down on the sand enjoying the day. K and C were wave jumping with Katelyn, Mom and Dad were discussing something by the blanket (on which were our cameras, shoes, plastic toy animals, fences, and other toy barn things, which was very far from the breaking waves), and I was hanging out with Mason, Kaiah, and Ethan while holding Bria. Suddenly, out of nowhere a sneaker wave appeared fast and furious. First it hit the wave jumpers but they mangaged to stay up. Then, it zoomed up to the very top of the sand covering everything with water. Thankfully, the rest of the kids and I were near the top of the beach because of Mason's tide phobia at the time. It came so fast, I yelled to Mason and Kaiah to run to higher ground while I simultaneously lifted Ethan by one hand just before the wave hit him. I don't remember how high it came on my legs, but it was really strong. All the kids were crying (but safe!), the water started to recede, and after we took a head count, we started thinking about our "stuff" The wave washed everything out to sea. Thankfully there was a group of teenagers downstream from our blanket and they immediately started collecting our stuff and bringing it back. One by one, soggy shoes, dripping, sandy cameras, little plastic cows, sheep, pigs and fences were being returned. I didn't have any part of the recovery as I was trying to calm down the frightened children. But I was able to watch the spectacle from afar and my mom, as usual, became incapacitated with laughter at the situation, which of course makes me laugh and I usually become quite useless as well. It was, however, also a scary lesson in God's power and sneaker waves on Oceanside's beach. Here are a few old pics I found of that day:

Back to 2010.

This time it was just me and the kids and my parents. We still didn't have good weather, but we ventured out into the gray anyway. The older two had a lot of fun exploring (near high ground). Mason still has quite a fear of the tide, but is slowly embracing it. Here are a few of the adventurous places they went:

Lochlan enjoyed being in the sling on my back until in started to rain...

And Cambria enjoyed the "treasures" for about 15 minutes.

Then she was ready to go back. Mom took her while I let the kids explore.

Then something wonderful happened! But I will blog about that another day...

We had a relaxing couple of days and enjoyed hanging out at the house enjoying the views and indentifying birds from the living room windows.