Howard Family, Party of 5: trip to the beach

First off, I did change my blog banner over the weekend.....what do ya'll think? The concept was one that I saw on etsy.com, a little shop sells similar pictures of children silhouettes, and can make a custom one if you send a photo. I thought "there HAS to be a way that I can do that myself". And so after a little photoshop tutorial from Jesse, a little trial and error, and a good hour 1/2 later, I got my silhouette of my three girls. :O)

Last weekend we went to the beach on a whim early Saturday evening/late afternoon. It was totally a "whim", and so the girls were fully clothed (no swimsuits), and we used plastic cups as buckets for the girls to play in the sand with. We let them play but didn't want them to get too dirty or wet. No fun for 3 little tinies! So we promised we'd come back next week, better prepared to have fun.

So while Jesse was at Gary's bachelor party, I loaded the girls into the car (freshly cleaned out I'm happy to say!) and we headed to Coronado. This time we were ready for fun....the girls had bathing suits & sunglasses on, we had digging/sandcastle-building tools, blankets, and my personal necessities: magazines & knitting/crochet WIPs ("work-in-progress"). The girls had so much fun! Mallory, who although she was braver than Mariah, was still fairly timid in the pool, was completely FEARLESS in the waves! I had to keep telling her to come back, come back, don't go out so far. She would go out and sit down so the water was up to her neck, and she was just loving it. I was a little less than relaxed....trying to keep Mallory from going too far (because I can barely swim in a pool, I'd be a bad rescuer in the ocean), watching Arissa run back to our blankets with the shells she found, and trying to keep sure Mariah was even still with us. But they had fun, holding hands, jumping over waves, looking at shells and the little creatures still inside many of them. The girls built a little castle, but they didn't want to be out of the water for too long.

And then on our way home, the girls could hardly contain themselves when I said we'd stop at Jamba Juice. :o) They love that place. Kind of pricey, but I'd rather treat to that, then hamburgers all the time. We had a lovely day.

These pics were all taken on the "whim" day, because on our better-planned trip, I left the camera at home. I wanted to be part of the fun, instead of just taking pictures of it. And Lord knows I don't need to try and make sure some bum doesn't steal my camera off my towel on TOP of trying to keep the girls from drowning!

Am I an "artiste de photographe" or what with this one? Sure it's blurry (the camera apparently focused on the sand patch behind her) but I still think it's great. With Mallory, a blurry picture only captures her personality perfectly, so it's ok. :O)