day at the beach....

Aahhh, nothing is like a day at the beach. The eastern shore of Lake Ontario is nicer than the ocean, in my humble opinion. I have been to the Atlantic ocean twice, in Delaware and Virginia, wait, three, Dominican Republic...and to the Carribean in Jamaica...the beach in Dominican was really nice, but this beach on Ontario is truly wonderful. Today started out cloudy, but the sun peeked out, then it clouded up again. The water was wavy, the fun-to-play-in waves. So I played. When Jonathan was brushing his teeth tonight he said he feels like he is still playing in the waves.

For being cloudy most of the day, I certainly got a lot of color...my face is quite rosy again....

Mirielle and I made chicken/red potato/onion/green pepper shish kabobs, with chicken marinated in homemade Cornell sauce. Yum. All pre-grilled, in the coolers for easy serving. There were also potato chips and cheese popcorn and cookies....so I made Paul stop on the way up at the Save-A-Lot for some fruit.....(which was a whole sad story....I ran in by myself while he waited with eleven kids in the van.....I hurriedly gathered grapes and peaches and pears and apples and oranges and carrots, and some graham crackers and Hershey bars, as per Sam's request....got in line behind a lady with a week's worth of groceries, everything ringing up wrong...only one other line open, longer than mine....rrr. All I could think of was how they must be out there in the hot van, thinking I am dawdling...which I WASN'T! So.....I hurried out to the parking lot, drove the cart into the cart return and tried to gather up the fruit to carry to the van....the bag of oranges broke open, oranges rolled here and there and everywhere....I put everything back into the cart, and as I approached the van, I could hear the kids joking about how long MOM was GONE for.....so, I did what every grown-up responsible Mom does every once in a while...I cried.)

Anyway, I recovered, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and had a lovely day watching the silly kids empty the lake into the sand, one bucket at a time...they went on the playground and played limbo, and lacrosse, and volleyball, and bocce ball. It still seems strange to go to the beach with no stroller/playpen/gear, to not nurse a baby, keep a baby out of the sun, chase a toddler....Camille is so easy and mature and funny....she did NOT want to leave the beach. She was just plain bummed out when it was time to go, even though we had spent over seven hours there.

Oh, I did take some pictures, but Joseph also enjoyed my camera today, he still has it....perhaps tomorrow I shall put up some beach pictures.