Beach Outing

Today we went to the beach with a group of friends. We went to Galveston and headed for Beach Pocket Park on the suggestion from others. We got to Park #3, unloaded--all the while some lady was in the parking lot on her cell phone with her kids griping about the beach being "broken" or something......who knows, right? Well, after paying $8 to park (strike one), one would think the beach would be alright. Strike two--the bathroom facilities are ALL broken and we were redirected to the nice Porta-Pottys downstairs. Strike three--that place was NASTY!! There was massive amounts of stinky seaweed all over that beach--you couldn't even get to the water. Well, we overheard cellphone lady say that the machine that combs the beach for seaweed broke and only Beach Pocket Park #1 had been cleaned, but that was down by the stables and there was stinky poo everywhere. Well, we decided to check it out (at least our pass worked for all three places). We loaded up all the gear and kids in all our cars and headed to Park #2--just as nasty, #1--also just as nasty. At least we were able to go to yet a Fourth place and get our 8 bucks back for parking (after the guy working in that office got off the phone with his boss and gave him the "silent finger". Classic. Apparently he disagreed with what was said on the other end) Whatever. It's just getting comical at this point! We finally decided just to head down to Stewart Beach (which was also $8 to park, but who cares). All this happened fairly quickly, so at least it didn't ruin the day. We had a GREAT time hanging out with friends and all the babies at the beach. It was a perfect day (for me, anyway) to be at the beach because it was very overcast and actually very pleasant temperature-wise. One cool thing that we got to see was a water spout. (okay, I'm a nerd, so i posted a link to info on water spouts) We were in the water and saw the rest of our group flailing around trying to get our attention and started pointing at it off in the distance--but it was pretty much dissipated by then. Then after saying "that's soooooooooo cool" a few times, it decided to re-form!! Sweet! Gotta love this picture of Ethan playing in the water at the beach with a waterspout/tornado in the background. Quite possibly might earn us the parents of the year award, right!! There wasn't any way we were giong to get that boy out of the water at that point anyway! He was having way too much fun. He and Chelsea had a blast. They both loved it. I was a little worried that they might be afraid of the waves or the water, but they just cackled and had a ball. Ethan learned how to trample sand castles (as you can see in that first picture) Chelsea just floated around like she was queen of everything and watched brother jump the waves! Needless to say a good time was had by all, and we didn't even have to worry about getting a sunburn, or getting swept away to Oz! I'm just glad to know that they like the beach and that they should have fun next month on vacation. Basically, the lesson we learned for the day is to ASK the dude (or dude-ette) at the entrance if the beach is full of seaweed or not, or just head down to Stewart Beach--it's the same price to park anyway and the facilities are nice.