July 07, 2003 - 8:13 a.m.
My boys love the beach. I find that a little sadly ironic since, in the 18 months we lived in Va. Beach we only wiggled our toes in the sand 3 times. Granted, the first summer was consumed with moving and the second with having a baby. But we never made it out there much.
We packed up the car early on Friday morning and drove to geniealisa's place in Norfolk for the 4th, joining foxphotog and his family, puck-eater, ladysusanna and jdl, thornbury and giuliana, educaitlin and the minivan samurai, and Brian/Vlad. Kevin grilled some excellent tuna kabobs and we walked up to the beach for the fireworks in the evening. We were far enough away from the main show to avoid frightening the children with too much noise but some locals with their own rockets took care of that for us. Zachary in particular was not happy and Mike had to take him back early. Saturday, however, was a different story.
Give a kid a pail and a spade and sandy beach and he's in heaven. Zachary loved running down to the surf, filling his pail with water, and bringing it back to dump on the "castle" that Marcus and I were building. Marcus shoveled sand into his pail, dumped it back out again, tasted it, shoveled some more, and generally had a wonderful time. Then I took him down to the water and let him sit just at the edge of where the waves came in. He laughed and tried to catch the water as it slid away from him. Zachary jumped up and down and splashed in it and would never have asked to leave. We entertained the idea of returning Sunday morning before driving home but there was too much packing to do and the threat of too much traffic to drive through.
This weekend reminded me of all the family trips to Nags Head we made in the mid 70's -the annual shopping for bathing suits, sunscreen, and flip flops, the interminable drive, and days spent running out to the beach and dragging half our weight in sand back to our hotel room - and nostalgia compels me consider the same for my boys... provided we can work it around Pennsic next year...
