Long Beach Island, 2016

I am happy to say this year at the beach was a little more relaxing and fun (for me) than last year. Aria being a year older made it a lot more interesting, fun, and chill. She loved playing with the sand and having her feet in the water. She would spend lots of time just sitting and sifting the sand through her hands or with a shovel. Content as can be. By the end of the week she wanted to walk out into the ocean.

 We bought Luc a boogie board this year and he had a blast! By the end of the week he was really getting the hang of riding in the waves.

Tuesday night Frederic and Dave went home because they needed to go back to work. One of the days we decided to go to the beach in the morning and leave at lunchtime because low tide was at 10am. It gave the kids a chance to be in the water without worrying about the waves, there weren't a lot of people out yet, and they got to look for shells. Luc dug up a sand crab by accident and freaked out. I didn't want him to be scared of them, so I took him with me to the water and dug up one and showed him how it walked on my hands- and it tickled. Well that put him at ease and he wanted to hold one. Then we spent a good 30 minutes+ digging up more and more and letting them go.

Frederic's boss told him Thursday that he puts in enough hours that he should go back to the beach to be with us the last day. So Thursday night around 11pm, Frederic was back at the beach. We surprised Luc, who was really really upset when Frederic had to leave on Tuesday.

Luc wanted to go fishing almost everyday, but we just went once. He got really good at casting his line out pretty far. I caught something in the deeper waters but it ended up snapping my line when I tried to wheel it in. Next year Luc will be a little bigger and we're thinking of taking him to the lighthouse really early in the morning where all the serious fishermen go. Maybe with some better bait we'll catch lunch. 

We had some amazing sunsets that week too.

Last year our beach slogan was Luc constantly saying: "I LOVE the Beach!"
This year it's Luc asking Aria: "Aria, are you happy?" And Aria responding: "Happy!"
And even though Aria and Luc both loved the beach, we could tell Aria was happy to be home as well. As soon as we were in the house, she started grabbing all her toys we left behind and hugging them. But then after they ate lunch, they immediately wanted to get out of the house and play in the water on the deck (even though it was a heat index of over 100 degrees).