Our Family Reunion at the Beach

Here is our hostess, Cynthia, standing amidst our setup. It was comfortable with all the umbrellas and chairs. Cheers, Cynth. Incidentally, she is about 5 months pregnant in this picture - she's having a boy in November.What fun!! We're all waiting for our first wave of the day. It can be a bit intimidating at first. I am standing here with Benjamin, Hannah, Preston and Paige. My brother-in-law, Brett, is behind me on the right side of the picture. Athena and Ethan are on my left sitting in the sand.

They're starting to get into it now, but just a little bit. I'll admit I'm not anxious to have the water up to my armpits. For those of you who don't know, I don't like getting wet, especially when it's cold.Paige took the plunge. I was surprised she got into it so quickly and I'm glad the kids had fun in the water. I felt very nervous as long as the kids were anywhere near the water. I had such a fear that we would lose one of them. There were 21 kids, mostly small kids, in our party. Michelle had a talk with me and had me watch the waves go over the bigger kids that were further out and they all bobbed up again after the waves moved on. Still, I was happy when we all finally got back to our picnic site and all were accounted for.

A nice shot of everyone having fun. For those of you who don't know my extended family, all the kids in the foreground belong to us and there's the center group standing up that is us. Those people to the right of the picture are special to someone I'm sure, just not us. Well, ok, in God's way.
See what I'm saying about keeping track of all the kids? This is a sample of how many there were. We decided to build up a fortress against the water and worked on it for quite a while. Some of the kids and several adults got involved and we had a good time watching the water completely decimate our fortress. We couldn't build it high enough or thick enough to make it work. It would have killed our pretend people every time. It was fun trying though.

In the end, we gave up. Our pretend people had to move to higher ground.What beach party is complete without someone getting buried in the sand. Here is Samantha, who is always up for some adventure, getting buried by Jacob and Cathy, with a little help from Katie.I like this picture of Preston. He loved playing in the water. He would run out of the water and wait for the next wave and then run into it. Here he is getting ready to run. I had to keep dragging him back to where we were. When your only focus is the water you tend to drift away from your party without realizing it. He was always angry when I dragged him back and then happily went about playing again when he realized I wasn't taking him away altogether and he could still play. Luckily he's still small enough that I can drag him where he needs to be. I don't know what I'll do when he's big enough to drag me. Hopefully by then he can be reasonable. My sister, Michelle, is in the purple shirt.And here he is crashing into the waves. I'm glad the kids got to experience the ocean.Look, mom ... sand!!I think I'll go ahead and roll around in it. I didn't know I'd be taking home a sand daughter. Seriously though, it was fun to relax and let the kids get as dirty and wet as they wanted. They don't often get that opportunity.Preston fell asleep immediately when we got back to the picnic site. He slept for about 2 hours all wrapped up in his towel. It was a bit cold at the beach, but he was all snug. I love sleeping baby pictures.

The walk to the water from our picnic site was a couple of minutes so once we got to either place we were there to stay for a while. Here is part of our little umbrella city around the campfire. Paige is eating her usual slab of hamburger - she is a carnivore. I like how relaxed she is sitting in that big chair. Also pictured are Callie and Jeremy.Ashley is enjoying her meal.Preston woke up after we had all eaten and got to enjoy more fun in the sand.Nathan, Hannah and Jacob also enjoying the sand.Matt, Jaime and many children having a good time.In the end Paige also succumbed to the excitement of the day and got all snuggly in the towels and fell asleep. It was a fitting end to a fun day. Cynthia did a great job on the reunion this year. Thank you Cynthia! We had a blast!