Surf City Surprise

On Friday night I found out from my parents that my cousin Matt had invited us all down to the beach for the weekend. His company was renting a house there for a couple more weeks, but the project they were working on was finished, so he had access to an empty, beautiful 6-bedroom beach-front property. We all jumped on the chance for that, especially because the weather forecast was for the high 80s and sunny both days. My parents, brother, sister-in-law, 3 nephews, me and my cousin all got to hang out for about 24 hours of seaside fun.

This is the view from the deck of the house (not bad, huh?):

On Saturday morning before they left, Jill told me that the boys were all wearing their swimsuits and had goggles on, ready to go. Nathaniel was the one who spent the most time in the water, and that was just getting up to about his knees at the most. But if you notice here, he's still wearing his goggles:

I wasn't planning on getting very wet because the water was quite cold, but when Sebastian came up and said "I lost the blue boat in the water!" what was I supposed to do, but wade into the waves and get it? So, living up to my reputation as coolest Aunt ever, I rescued the boat while getting drenched. My pants were originally rolled up, but they unrolled while I was trying to catch the boat in the waves:

Emmy preferred just to watch the water and take everything in. He really enjoyed the feel of the sand in his hands and toes, and the lack of fellow beach goers meant that it was OK for him to throw the sand if he wanted to, which he did.


On Sunday morning I woke up to this amazing sunrise. This is the view from the deck:

Emmy is also an early bird and we had a nice time watching the sunrise together. We talked about the birds on the beach and the colors in the water and in the sky. It was such a lovely way to start the day.

Every town has its watertower:

Much of the morning was spent on the beach. Here are Mom and Dad taking a walk and enjoying the waves crashing:

Sebastian was a little under the weather, but still got out to enjoy the beach and he loved lounging on the deck and watching the water. He was living the high life here eating breakfast with my cousin Matt's sunglasses on:

We headed out for a great game of mini-golf around 10 am. John, Dad, Matt, Nathaniel and I all took turns actually playing the game while Sebastian and Emerson wandered around the course playing their own version of the game. Emmy got a hole in one every time by simply hitting the ball once and then picking it up and dropping it in the hole. He was thrilled with himself.

Here's Emmy, Matt, Me, Nathaniel, Sebastian and Dad after our game:

The only bummer was the the arcade wasn't open yet, so we didn't get to play any Skee-Ball. We did, however, stop for ice cream on the way out of town. It was such a lovely impromptu weekend at the beach. I'm already looking forward to our time in Cape May in August!