Until the monsoon hit....

We were having a blast!! A friend invited us to a great beach only about 35 miles from our house. We went with our friends Jill and Lizzie, and thank goodness we had the company. The beach is really nice-small, nice sand, shallow water, quiet and has a nice pirate ship play structure. All of us were having lots of fun. Especially Landon! He was really grumpy, then took the water really quickly. He was very brave, probably a little brave for my taste. It didn't even bother him to go under the water.....yikes. Oh, and the highlight for the kids was watching a lady take a jelly fish out of the water. I guess the only potential problem of the beach-although there was a huge sign in the entry way warning of jellyfish in the water.

Anyhow we saw the storm clouds come, heard talk of an impeding storm, but tried to brave it out. Well, we ended up in the massive storm. Luckily the workers let us stay in the shed for a while, so we could at least dry off the kids so they didn't have to do the long ride wet. Incidentally, the short ride there turned into 3 hours coming home because of construction and and accident. Jordan informed me that her bottom hurt from sitting so long. I told her I was sorry, but I felt like I was sitting in sand paper since I didn't have a chance to rinse off. The only other problem was that the girls kept begging for snacks and getting them to children in the very back proves to be a challenge. Jill and I enjoyed our tootsies and York patties, though! The other good thing was that the boys pretty much slept the whole time and woke up only about 1/2 hour before we got home.

Here are some pics from the day:
Everyone loved playing in the water. Landon really loves the water. It makes me excited for the Outer Banks in a few weeks.
This is us in the storage shed after we got the kids changed.

Here is another of my brave boy!!
Jordan having fun.
Spencer loves to dig in the sand.
It is a really nice little beach for kids.
This was when we left-just before another storm hit on the way home. The street was flooded!

The wind was so strong, at one point we closed the door of the shed because the rain drops hurt when they hit.
more of the storm
can you see the raindrops on the boardwalk...mother nature is an amazing thing!!
the cold kids in the shed before we changed them.

One fun thing that happened at beach was that we met this gal while hanging out in the water. She and I talked for a few minutes-she was really friendly and seemed to need someone to talk to. She asked about our group and how we all knew each other so I told her we knew each other through church. I mentioned that there were some gals from Jill's church that I didn't know and she was pretty quick to figure us out-she said "so you are in the same stake, but different wards?" I was pretty surprised, then she told us she was raised LDS, was inactive for a while, but had been back to church for the last year. We talked for a while longer, so It was really cool. She even carried a bunch of our stuff in the rainstorm. She gave me her e-mail and said her parents welcome anyone who wants to visit Palmyra. If we stayed home, we wouldn't have met her!!

Then while were were in the shed, there was another family who was waiting out the storm and out of the blue they asked us what stake we were in. Apparently they heard me tell Rachel, the girl I met that I had been married in the DC temple. We discussed the fact that there are a few words that you only hear other LDS people say. It was funny.

So, all in all, it wasn't a bad day. It was a little adventure and I sure am glad Jill was with me on the drive because I would have been crazy and may have resorted to talking to myself!!