Just another day at the beach

While it's not totally destroyed anymore, you can still see the effects of Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island.  We had not been to the island since well before the storm hit, but last month it was evident that the restoration is still incomplete.  We did a day trip and saw some homes and businesses that are still unoccupied or in various stages of repair.  Lots of work has been done in the two years that have passed, but it was kind of sad to see the visible projects as well as those things that were missing.


Mia had never been to the beach before this summer.  We took her to Moody Gardens in 2007 but she was not a big fan of sand at that point.  When it came time to see the ocean, we stuck to the seawall.  This time, she had no fear of sand and was interested to see what the big deal was about the ocean, since she really didn't remember it.  Annie has told her about Jaws and she has somehow developed an irrational fear of being pinched by a crab, that we can't blame on SpongeBob.  So, she initially had some reservations about going in the water.  Mia told Annie that she didn't need to put on her swimsuit because she was only going to get her feet wet.  She just wanted a pair of shorts and a tank top.  Well...we weren't driving all that way just to dip a toe in, so Annie talked her into the swim suit and we made our way south.  


We checked online and decided to go to Stewart Beach.  I guess that's been the family tourist beach for as long as I can remember, so we went for it.  We went on a weekday, so there was not a big crowd.  We got a good parking spot and found an area to sit that was right by the water.  We changed clothes and shuttled our gear to the sand.  Once we got settled, I realized that I had left something in van and went back to get it.  By the time I returned, Annie had gotten Mia into the water up to her knees and she was grinning from ear to ear.  Mia, that is.  Annie still has the Jaws thing and wasn't too keen on any of us becoming shark bait.  So, I took Mia and Annie watched us nervously as we waded out into the water.  We got about chest high on Mia and Annie got really nervous.  I looked back and she wasn't looking at us.  I found out later that day that she "couldn't watch us go out that far."   Mia was loving it.  We came back to the shore and she yelled to Annie "I SUPER love the beach!!"  Yes she did.  About that time, I somehow realized that I still had Annie's keys in my pocket.  That was just awesome.  I knew that the keys wouldn't be a problem, but I panicked a little bit when I thought about the remote.  I just really didn't want to buy another one of those.  Fortunately, I tried to unlock the van and re-lock it and the remote still works.  Apparently, it is water resistant to at least two feet.  Regardless, it was pretty embarrassing!


We ended up going back out about chest high to me and floating back to shore with the waves.  I had to teach Mia to jump on the waves at the right time and to keep her mouth closed.  She got a mouthful a couple of times and you would have thought she had a mouthful of crude oil (possible, I guess) based upon the look on her face.  Regardless of the nasty salt water taste, she did not want to come back to the shore.  She was having the time of her life.  I held her up and we did our best to keep from getting knocked over by the waves.  It wasn't exactly the north shore, but there was enough water to keep us on our toes.  She's learned how to swim now, but I really didn't want her swimming on her own in the ocean just yet.  


After a while, I got too tired to carry Mia out into the deeper water.  So, we decided to come back in and built a few sand castles.  Mia had been looking forward to that all week.  It's all she really wanted to do before we left our house.  Of course, that was before we found out that she was a beach bunny.  


On the way home, we got caught in the rush hour traffic south of downtown.  So our trip home was quite a bit longer than we'd hoped for.  About twenty minutes from home, Mia commented that she was too hot and asked us to cool it off, which we did.  About nineteen minutes from home, I turned around to ask her if it was better and she was stone cold asleep.  Nice.  A power nap at dinner time.  How cool is that?  She felt great after she woke up.  And at 9:00pm.  And 10:00pm.  And 10:30...


When I got home and took my shower, I noticed for the first time the beautiful tapestry on my back.  I (sort of) applied my own sunscreen, so it was far from expertly done.  I missed quite a few spots in a seemingly random patter.  Luckily,  I somehow didn't get completely burned.  However, I did have a really crazy patternn on my back that was a different color than everything else.  Repeat after me...ask for help with sunscreen.  Or as Mia used to say, scunscreen.


All in all, in spite of the tiny tragedies, it was a great day.  One of the coolest parts of the day was getting Kennedy's file from China while we were on the causeway bridge.  Josh sent it right before we got to the bridge. 

Now we're trying to figure out now how we're going to get back to the island before school starts.