Dominik's first beach visit

After Natalie's cardio appointment, we visited some friends who had spent the week at a beach house.  What a great idea!  We drove 5300 miles for our vacation this year...next year, let's drive 10 miles and rent a beach house!

Anyway, this was our first trip to the beach in I don't know how long...five months?  The kids had a blast digging in the sand and Natalie couldn't be kept out of the water.  I didn't change into swimwear so I stayed dry and chatted with Betsy, while keeping an eye on Dominik in his baby cabana.  Tom and Pete jumped in the waves with the kids.

Pete and Betsy's oldest child, Elijah, brought over some crabs that he'd caught for everyone to look at.  Elijah also loves babies, so he held Dominik a lot.  Here in the picture he's giving Dominik the best view of the crab.  Elijah's brother Luke and sister Ruth are looking on. Thanks Elijah!

Here's Konrad getting a better view (Elijah's brother John is checking out the crabs in the bucket):

And here's Natalie, disappointed that she had to get out of the water.  Tom was quite tired out from keeping her from drowning herself.  I suspect that it's from all the pool swimming we did this summer--she's even more fearless of water than ever, which is dangerous.  At one point we didn't notice that she had snuck away and was wading in the waves by herself!  That gives me a chill just thinking about it.

With the incredibly cool summer we've had already, I hope we can make another trip to the beach on a warm day!  I keep thinking it's going to get hot and it never does.