Playing Catch-up - Beach Outing

I'm still playing catch-up after disappearing from this space for like forever. And I'm just now downloading pictures from my camera. So it looks like we got to go to the beach a couple of times so far, both times in April. Which is funny 'cause then we tried going the entire month of May, but it was always too cold or rainy or the weather service forecast called for thunderstorms on the coast.

Anyway, first M and I went together with two other Russian moms and their kids. So we had a little field trip - 3 adults and 4 boys. We were outnumbered! But the kids had fun. And, thanks to a friend, I discovered a beautiful beach not far from Raleigh. It's as close as Carolina Beach, but is way more interesting, especially if you are not into relaxing with a book or your kid is not into building sandcastles for hours on end.

Our first trip to Kure Beach was amazing. The water was still too cold for swimming or even jumping in the waves. But it was ok with us because we found some amazing and pretty rare shells. And then we found sea urchins and starfish, some dead, but others very much alive and bobbing about in the shallow warm water.

Now, that was super exciting and I decided that we should go back as soon as possible for more awesome finds. The second time we went, it was purely a family outing - Chris, myself and M. The day was a whole lot windier and colder, so we didn't see any starfish or sea urchins this time. There weren't even that many shells. But we did find lots and lots of crap claws, all different shapes and sizes. Most were very stinky, so we left them be.

Finally, we found one that used to belong to a blue crab. It was so beautiful that we decided to put up with the smell. We figured, we could bring it home and put it in the sunniest spot on the driveway or next to an ant hill or something. Well, to make the long story short, it didn't work out that way and even after a couple of weeks the claw remained too stinky to be allowed inside the house. And outside, if the wind was blowing at just the right angle, the smell would make you do a double-sniff followed by an inspection of the soles of your shoes and thoughts of seafood poisoning. We ended up throwing it away.

But it's not like we didn't find any other treasures that day. Sure, there were no live sea urchins, but we did find one and a half sand dollar (ok, one whole one and one half of the other one). And there were lots of pieces of a very beautiful bright yellow seaweed. Oh, and lots and lots of little pieces of brain corals, perfectly sun bleached.

We let M use our camera to photograph his own finds. It's a great practice for him for the moments when we need him to take a photo of the two of us. If he pays attention, he usually does a very good job. Of course, we still end up asking strangers to take the photos of the three of us. But just wait 'til we get a pet monkey and train it in the art of photography!

Well, that's about all for our beach outings to date. Wew!