Beach

We made our first family trip to the beach this last week! We left Tuesday afternoon and made it to the hotel (an hour from the beach) around dinnertime, so we stopped, had dinner and went swimming at the pool.
Wednesday morning we got up with hopes of a nice sun-filled day at the beach, but it was raining...It was supposed to get sunny in the afternoon, so we headed down anyway, still with high hopes of being able to swim. We reached the boardwalk and walked it a little, the boys played some arcade games, well mainly only one arcade game (the car racing one). Jarom thought it was hilarious to drive in circles and crash into the walls. We ate some lunch and thought the rain might let up, but it got worse! So we decided to go see Matt's cousin who lived nearby before going back to the hotel. As we walked back to the car, there were puddles a foot (or more) deep! I insisted Matt drive through the rain and flooded roads. As we drove, the streets were a little less flooded in some areas, but more in others. The boys thought it was hilarious to watch the walls of water that splashed up 1 or both sides of the car. When we left Matt's cousin's place, the water had gotten even deeper and we ended up flooding the engine when Matt turned onto a road with deeper water. Matt had to get out and push the car back to higher, drier ground so we could get the engine to start again. After this we got to some higher roads and made it back to the hotel. We were all so exhausted from the rain, that we watched a movie and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Thursday morning we got a nice start. We packed everything up and went to the beach. It was nice and sunny. The beach was not really crowded and we were able to enjoy it better. The boys enjoyed playing in the sand and didn't quite know what to make of the ocean. Courage was afraid of the big waves, and even the little waves. When I took him down to just put his feet in, he got upset. Hope would not stay on the blanket when I put her down, but insisted on crawling into the sand and trying to eat it. I think she really enjoyed the feeling of the sand. She definitely loved being outside all day. Jarom enjoyed the ocean enough to go play in it with Daddy and even went on the boogie board (of course we had lifejackets for the kids). Toward the end of the afternoon we started getting ready to go. Our plan was to take the ferry across the bay and then go to Ocean City. We couldn't find a place to shower and change, but Matt found a hose that we could rinse off with (we all had a good amount of sand on us), then we ended up changing in the car (easy for kids, not adults). It ended up taking just enough time that when we got to the ferry terminal, we found out that the last ferry left about 30 minutes earlier and I thought the last one was 2 hours later from the info I got on the web. Since the driving time was the same from either side, we decided to go to the boardwalk where we were and then drive home from there. After an enjoyable evening at the boardwalk, we left around 11 pm and headed home. We got home around 4 am, showered to remove all the sand we couldn't get off before, and went back to bed. Of course the kiddos all woke up around the normal time.