best day at the beach

The weather was perfect, sunny and breezy and not very hot, and we were very glad because this is the day we had planned to go to the beach. We didn't get there as early as we planned because the Mitchell family needed an after breakfast nap this morning. The youngest Mitchell has been getting up extremely early in the mornings and we ALL needed more sleep! But when we got up after our naps, we loaded up, sunscreened up, and headed to Henderson State Park. This park has a beautiful beach and very nice pavilions for changing clothes (good restrooms, too). Since school started here today, we had the beach almost to ourselves!

I have never had a more perfect day at the beach than I did today. I have always been too hot or too sunburned or been bothered by crowds, sand, seaweed, jellyfish, or some other kind of bother. Not today, though--no big waves, no seaweed, perfectly clear water with no jellyfish! Dennis helped his Daddy fly his new Elmo kite and then we all went for a float/swim in the ocean. Dennis had fun hopping from float to float and later actually waded into the water on his own and took off by himself to float and paddle around (which I let him do for approximately 10 seconds while I watched in amazement as my child actually and voluntarily swam on his own before I scooped him up and held onto him). Dennis and David built a super sand castle, or sand garage rather (since Dennis used it to house his dump trucks). We stayed two hours and could have stayed longer even, and this surprised me because Dennis has such a limited timespan in which to stay new places these days. We left to go eat, and the only way we were able to convince Dennis to leave was to promise a hamburger!

We lunched at Cheeseburger in Paradise where we all enjoyed hamburgers. Dennis ate his way through two bowls of mandarin oranges and ate two mini burgers. Much to my delight, this place offered Chocolate Nachos, possibly one of the most perfect desserts I've ever had the pleasure of eating. We stuffed ourselves, did some brief outlet shopping, stopped at a winery, and then headed back to Gigi's to pack the car for the trip home. On the drive to her place, we passed a fire station where the firemen were outside with the truck, so we stopped and she asked if Dennis could see the fire truck. They happily showed him around and set him up in the driver's seat, and he could not have been happier! He cried big tears when we made him get back in the car but got happy again when we stopped to search for a geocache near Gigi's place. He loved opening the 'treasure box' and chose a small plastic Goofy as his prize. What a wonderful vacation it has been! We had so much fun, as Dennis sleepily announced when we got home. Thanks Gigi for such a great time.