Just another day at the beach......

We have so many pictures this year, I hardly know where to start. Some of the pictures are from Angie, she took over 200. We took something less than that but got some great ones. This is the back seat of the car on the way down to the beach. This year we tried something different. We decided to leave at 3am and drive all the way in a day. We arrived around 130pm. I liked that, what I didn't like was that I was too excited to sleep and didn't get to sleep until after 1am so we didn't leave until 4am and the kids were just starting to go to sleep again at about 530am and we stopped to pay a toll and it all started all over again. Kids were VERY tired and after all the leaving early we still sat in traffic for 2 hours in the same place south of DC. That was infuriating. Next year we will take 81 down, even though it adds an hour, it still saves my nerves. We took 81 back this year and really enjoyed the drive. We drove past Shenandoah National Park and I want to go back and do some exploring one of these days.

So, we got there and Allen hauled all our stuff up to our room and then it was craziness. Sunday was our first official family walk on the beach that Jake managed to turn into full on body surfing and Julia and Jo became sand crabs. Here we see the whole Shaw family, first walk on the beach (THANKS ANGIE). We see Julia, Mayci and Chandra in the background, note, this is the ONLY time Julia actually wore her beach hat in the entire week, good thing we got a picture or that would really have been a waste of money~ And we see Jo in her absolute favorite beach pastime, sitting in a sand whole, later you'll see a picture of her eating sand and walking in waves with Allen those are the entire sum of her vacation, that and sleep.

Here we have Allen, Travis (packing Malan) and Rafal, acting cool. Laura and Jo taking a walk in the waves and Max and Jacob just shortly before the "don't get too wet" thing went completely awry and full on body surfing began.

The girls were happy in the sand, Jo, Mayci and Julie. Jo in her hole.

We spent time at Sandbridge Beach, where the house was, Chesapeake Bay, which the kids love and Virginia Beach, a great place for Boogie Boarding. And watching military maybe SEAL? training. We've seen it every single year we've gone to Virginia Beach.

Here are the girls at Chesapeake Bay. Jo in the water with Allen, in her hole by mom and Julia on the beach towel, well away from any kind of water! Jo was crazy about the water here, she would run down to the edge of the waves and grab Allen's legs and try to pull him into the water, she wanted him to hold her hands. Julia absolutely wanted nothing to do with the water this year. Jacob, on the other hand, couldn't be kept out of the water. Here is he and Max playing some football in Chesapeake Bay.

Next post, Virginia Beach and the Pool. Jacob learned how to play Marco Polo this year, it was funny.