Monday, May 25th

The day started early as PJ woke up at 5:!5 - central time, so 6:15 here. I gave him his busy bag and that kept him happy in his crib for about 30 minutes. Then, we all got up, got dressed and went into town to eat breakfast and shop for groceries. Breakfast was at McDonald's and grocery shopping was at Piggly Wiggly. Jfer and I did the shopping and RJ took the kids to a park. This was terrific because everything would have taken much longer with the kids. The store is unfamiliar and the list was long - we have to buy everything down to salt and pepper. It took 2 carts, but these carts were rather small. Then we stopped at the dollar store because Jfer forgot to pack beach shoes, shorts or a brush....and then, it was discovered that she forgot to pack money. Very smart of her as this allowed her to get her dollar store items for free...!

We got home, unloaded the groceries, got dressed and headed for the beach. PJ wants to be in the water all.the.time. And he'll charge right out there, so we have to be vigilant. LJ likes the water too, but he is, and always has been, more cautious. The water is more brown than last year...because of all the rain they have been getting. But, the beach restoration project is finished and the beach is still nice, white, beautiful sand. We played for about an hour and then came home and showered off and ate lunch. The kids had PB&J and the adults had sandwiches...except Jfer who collected the tiniest of little mussels and boiled them open and took out the tiniest morsel of meat. She decided it was not worth it to collect those again.

The boys and Jfer took naps and I laid out on the deck for about 20 minutes and then came back in. LJ was not napping, so I laid down with him until he fell asleep (and took about a 1/2 hour nap in the process) and then went back on the deck for another 20 minutes. RJ watched tv shows and surfed the internet. PJ took a very long nap.

After naps, we went to rent our boogie boards and then headed back to the beach....around 5:00 eastern time. We spent about an hour and a half playing with the boogie boards and building sand castles. Then, we came home for showers and dinner - which was hamburgers and hot dogs...the kids ate a pizza shaped like Mickey Mouse's head. The kids then went to bed and Jfer, RJ, and I watched one episode of season 1 of Monk - which we brought with us. The DVD player does not have a remote, so we aren't' sure how we'll watch the 2nd episode since we're sure we'll have to put a DVD in for the kids at some point on Tuesday.