A day at the beach... that wasn't

I was so excited for out first trip to the beach. It was a bea-utiful day!! It was Brooke's first real trip to the beach! Yea!
The day started out well. As I was packing the car, the thermostat said 80. Great! I thought... what a great day at the beach this will be! I loaded up the sun screen slathered girls and off we went. After we crossed the bridge to the beach, I noticed a cloud cover. The thermostat on the car dropped to 74... not too bad, I thought. We pulled into the parking space and feed the meter for 2 hours. I loaded the girls and all of the beach stuff into the jogging stroller. We met up with Monica and boys and headed down to the water. I quickly learned that pushing the stroller on the soft sand is not so easy. That is OK, I thought... it is all worth it for a day at the beach! We headed towards the pier (our destination due to our previous sunburn) and we laid out our stuff.


Hana headed to the water with Josh (which was a HUGE accomplishment for her- she has been afraid of the water for the last two summers!). They threw seashells and played at the edge of the water.



Unfortunately Hana took two spills in the water. That would not have been a big deal on a normal day. But at about that same time, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the wind stated blowing. Hana sat with me wrapped under a towel. During all of the Brooke was happily playing under the pier.

I went to pick Brooke up and she was shivering. So, I brought her out into the "sun" with us. She preceded to eat some sand (and enjoy every minute of it!)

Hana did find some pleasure in chasing the birds.

We then decided to have lunch. About half way through lunch Hana said "Can we go home?" I felt really guilty trying to force them to stay at the beach. So I told her after we finished lunch we could go home. After we finished, I packed up my freezing children and headed back to the car. The temperature rose 10 degrees as we walked back to the car. As I drove away with a whole 42 minutes still left on my meter, I felt a sense of sadness that our day was cut short. But here is the beauty of the situation... we live 20 minutes from the beach!! We WILL go back!

I should add that over all it was a success since Hana wanted to play in the water. That gives me hope that the rest of beach season will be fun!