Vacation Day 2: The Beach

This morning we headed out to the beach with swim suits on, a car full of beach gear and plenty of sunscreen. I had been worried that Kate might not enjoy the beach because of her issues with being dirty, but then last night she seemed more than willing to play in the sand so I thought this morning would be a breeze....except that it wasn't...at first.

Her swim shoes were wet. We wore them last night and they were still damp and sandy and she cried because they were dirty. So she and I walked into the water a bit to clean them while Nick unloaded the car, and she continued to cry because now they were really wet.  She spent the first 30 minutes or so in tears and complaining that she wanted to go back home. Nick sat in the beach chair and held her during her tantrum...and I proceeded to play in the sand.

I know my child. Give her some time and eventually she'll come around.  Besides, we put way too much work into just getting everything we needed together to go out there this morning. We were not leaving after 20 minutes. So I began a sand castle and dug a big hole and filled it with water and started gathering tiny coquina clam shells for her bucket and what do you know? Eventually she wandered over to me in the water and even began digging in the sand on her own. 

We ended up spending around 3 hours playing in the sand and waves, gathering more shells (I even found half of a sand dollar) and picking up trash on the beach. It was definitely nap time after that, and this evening we're headed over to Port Aransas.