Crane Beach

It feels like we packed a lot of summer into one day.

Hurricane Earl never materialized last night, despite all of the predictions of doom and gloom and coastal flooding. (In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that it was not just a clever ploy by Poland Springs to sell obscene amounts of bottled water.) Earlier this week we had planned to try to make today a beach day, but were somewhat dissuaded when we thought that Saturday would be a complete washout due to Earl. But upon waking up this morning we saw no rain and heard no wind, so we figured we would chance it and stick with our plans.

We arrived at Crane Beach in Ipswich around 10:45 and managed to get to the beach itself without incident (no small feat when you are hauling 2 kids and their many accoutrements). We were greeted by beautiful sand, no clouds in the sky, and a lot of seagulls.

After a quick trip to test the water (relatively warm by New England standards) we settled on our blanket. Andres wasted no time in making sand castles--this required many trips to the water's edge for building materials...but after a few trips back and forth he stopped using the water to make sand-castle quality mud, and instead poured it in a little hole he had dug just to see it disappear. Ah the joys of the beach.



For her part, Celia spent a little time in her stroller, and then decided that she would rather crawl around and eat sand, thank you very much. (We tried to convince her that sand was not exactly a filling snack, and she largely obliged...except for a few occasions where I caught her with a fistful of it in her mouth.) Now that she is mobile she really does not want to stay anywhere. She loved the beach and had no fear about venturing off the blanket...thankfully, her big brother did not mind too much when she Godzilla-ed his sand castle:



By now it was past noon and time for another trip to the water. We all walked down to the ocean for a quick cool down and played for a bit in the waves.

Lunch was up next. Ok...Celia had lunch, Andres had a snack, Natalia had a quick sandwich, and since I was feeding Celia, I did not have much time to eat. We had to be extra vigilant about our food with so many brazen seagulls around (I thought I was going to have to fight a couple of them) but we all managed, for the time being anyway, to keep them at bay.

After lunch we took a nice walk down the beach so Andres could collect seashells. He and Natalia went into the water again (those swimming lessons are paying off!), and I put Celia down for a few moments because she was getting heavy to carry. Some cute older couple stopped to smile at her...but before they could say "Oh she's adorable! And so well-behaved!" she had grabbed a giant fistful of wet sand and shoved it into her mouth, like she had not eaten in 5 days (it had been 20 minutes since lunch). We all had a good laugh.

Natalia and Andres came back from the ocean and we all hung out for a bit before packing up and heading home.



Natalia drove home, everyone else napped (myself included), and Andres even continued his nap when we got home--the morning had knocked the poor guy out.

A quiet afternoon at home, and then we turned it around pretty quick and hopped back in the car or a ride down to Gillette for the Revolution-Sounders game, which is probably our final all-four-together game of the season. Our commitment was rewarded with a 3-1 victory and post-game fireworks celebration, which both Celia and Andres sat through without being too scared. I drove home (everyone else slept, Natalia included) and it was an easy transition from carseat to bed for both kids.

Time for me to hit the hay too...6:45 is right around the corner!