Beach Day

As a resident of a coastal city, the amount of time I actually spend at the beach is something of a disgrace. It's about a half hour drive from our house without bad traffic, so by the time I make it out I feel obligated to spend at least an entire afternoon there, which is a pretty valuable chunk of weekend to dedicate to wind, sand, and water. This isn't to say that I don't like the beach, just that a lot of the activities that I so enjoy partaking in at the beach can also be done at our neighborhood pool or backyard or on the couch (ahem, day drinking). Yesterday, however, the stars and planets aligned just right and we packed up the Subaru for its first trip to the beach:

Look at the trunk space!

Carl manages to go to the beach all the time with just a surfboard and towel, but for some reason my involvement makes things a lot less simple. Two beach chairs, two beach bags, a cooler, a bocci ball set, a surfboard, some road rage and 3 stops later we arrived at the beach! 

I hunkered down with a jumbo bag of boiled peanuts:

Once the sun came out we started up a game of bocci ball:

The boys all called each other before hand and agreed to wear their red shorts.

And then the thing that you always hope doesn't happen at the beach (but statistically has to), happened to poor Carl:

Seagull poop to the face.

The reason he doesn't look as upset as you'd expect is because even though I scrambled to get my phone to capture the moment (such a good wife I am), the shock had worn off and the poop wiped and when I said, "act like you just got pooped on by a seagull," he took a little light-hearted offense. So really what I captured was his reaction to my obnoxiousness. 

All in all it was a great day! If sunburns were a measure of beach day success then yesterday is a chart-topper.