beach classics

On our second morning at Gulfport Beach, everyone in the house was a bit slower at getting up and around...not our boys though! At 7:30AM, they were awake and asking when we could go back to the beach! We somehow coerced them to eat some breakfast and then immidiately got back into our still damp swimming suits and headed out! Our family was the only ones ready, though, and so we found our way to this community park close to the house while we waited for everyone else to get ready so we could head to the ocean!

This park is really cool! It has a playground and also a waterpark that is built to look like a pirate ship and whale! You push a button on a nearby post and the water begins to shoot from all areas of the ship, whale and palm trees! The boys really enjoyed it!

Once the rest of the family was ready for the beach we headed to the sand! When we arrived, the tide was low and so Brandon decided to see how far he could walk out into he water...

he got quite-a-ways out there (he looks like a speck in this picture) before he came back in.

Unfortunately, Brandon had waded out into the ocen without water shoes (or any shoes for that matter) and had run into some jellyfish...uh oh! He got stung pretty good by a big one. He said he felt it wrap around his leg and then his foot began to burn. He kicked it off and then suffered through the pain. He put water shoes on soon after returning to the beach!!

On our second day at the beach we took part in every beach "right of passage" you can think of! We started with sand castles! The boys used their buckets to make castles and then decorated them with everything from sea shells to seagull feathers and plain ol' debris washing up on shore.

Papa took his castle building pretty seriously, carving out windows and doors! As you can tell, Ash loved it!

Noni also constructed a detailed castle complete with a moat and bushes! Yep! I said bushes! Everyone was teasing her that she watches too much HGTV!!

After completing his castle, Papa moved on to "sand art" by using the sand to root for his favorite football team...

Uncle Bill and Aunt Beck answered Papa's football challenge with their own mascot!!

As our sand castles began to wash away with the tide, the real "sand artists" took over and began creating some amazing creatures with the sand! Brandon constructed jaws, complete with a foot in his mouth...

and then Brandon himself in his mouth!! HA!!

Brandon also created an octopus!

Uncle Bill and Aunt Beck also took sand art to the next level! They worked very hard on their projects and constructed both a sea horse and a dolphin in great detail! I watched from my beach chair as they even found sticks and shells to detail the skin of the dolphin and the scales of the sea horse! Quite impressive!

Our last beach goer right of passage?? How can you go to the beach and not bury someone!?!? Brandon was nominated (against his will) as the one we would bury, but he was a good sport about it! Maddox was a bit worried, at first, that we were burying daddy under sand...but after we convinced him that daddy would be a-okay and would be able to get back out, he got into it and eventually thought it was pretty funny!

When daddy finally emerged from the sand, Maddox was calling him "sand man"! He does look alot like a sand man!

Eventually, as we sat on the beach, Aunt Beck noticed some seagulls hanging around and sort of "watching" us. She stood up, grabbed a bag of potato chips and began throwing chips into the air! What?!?! She encouraged us all to join in so we began throwing chips, french fries, bread...anything we could find we threw into the air and beleive it or not, the seagulls began swarming...

At first, there were just a few birds but before long there were TONS of seagulls swarming right over our heads! They seemed to be multiplying right in front of our eyes!

Feeding the seagulls was awesome and we did it more then once! The birds literally will fly right in front of your face! One even took a piece of bread right out of Papa's hand! Maddox got pretty good at throwing french fries into the air and one of the seagulls would catch it in his mouth right out of the air! It was SO cool!

After dark, on our second day at the beach, we headed back to the water to hunt crabs! Apparently, when the tide gets to its lowest point the water will push crabs up onto the beach and then the crabs will scurry and scramble back into the water! We bought the boys each their own flashlight and then walked up and down the coast hunting the fast moving crabs. Unfortunately, we never really found one. Uncle Bill and Noni saw one crab still in the water but it never made its way onto the sand. We did, though, find alot of seashells and one or two hermit crabs! It was a fun hunt!

After all day two at Gulfport Beach had to offer we couldn't imagine what day three would bring...