Beach Day!

We've been meaning to head to the beach and today we got back there, minus Daddy. He had to work at 9:45, so we started prepping to leave when he took off. The kids were through-the-moon excited to go swimming, especially since it's been so nasty around here, weather-wise. This time, we were armed with Funoodles (large foam tubes) and a pink hippo floating thingy for Anna to sit in that we found at a garage sale (thank you again, Grandpa Litwiller!) We also took along our lunch in case we all got hungry.

The beach wasn't too crowded when we got there and I actually found a decent parking place in the lot this time. The boys took off straight into the water with their Funoodles and I can see a huge difference in their swimming now versus before their lessons. Money well spent, I must say! They were bravely paddling out to the deeper water with the use of the noodles and demonstrating many of the skills they learned. I have to say the biggest change I see is in Matthew, who no longer panics in the deeper water and wants me to show him more on how to swim. We worked on treading water and I demonstrated the side stroke, although he didn't try it yet. I'm so proud of the progress they have made!

And I'm SO thankful for that floating thing! It fits Anna perfectly and she let me take her all over the swimming part of the lake. Last time she clung to me in terror, but in her personal boat she was completely content and sang to herself much of the time. She even let me throw her around a bit. We almost made it out to the far end of the swimming area, but I didn't want to have to swim and pull her rope at the same time. I did notice that when I inched out to deeper water, the boys would join me, and soon they were spending much of their time in water deep enough that they couldn't touch the ground. Again, this NEVER would have happened last year with Matthew!

We had a wonderful time and came home sandy, dirty, cooled off, and sunburned. Well, Matthew and I are sunburned. I KNOW I got his back good, but he's pink anyway. And Matthew is a much better sunblock applier than Ben, because the half of my back done by Ben is a little crispy :)