Merry Christmas

Note to self:  Just because your kids are older, doesn't mean they won't act like toddlers when you take them to the beach.

This year I decided that the girl's Christmas card picture would be taken at the beach.  I mean, we live super close, and yet, in the year we have lived here, we haven't been.  We just aren't beach people on a regular basis.  Our pool and lake cover our water needs.  So, I asked if MadHatter's friend A wanted to come along to make it a little more fun (and perhaps get more natural smiles because photographer kids syndrome is a real thing) and piled them all into the car.  I didn't realize how little I had thought this all through, which will become very apparent as I retell this story.

We got to the parking lot about an hour before sunset.  The golden hour they call it.  I call it "shoot fast and hope the girls cooperate because the sun goes down quickly" hour.   We found our spot by the rocks, and Stinkerbell quickly did her solo poses...

And here is when the first mishap comes in.  We had taken off our shoes when we hit the sand.  But didn't put them far enough away from the incoming tide.  As I am snapping a very cooperative Stinkerbell, I hear A yell, "the shoes!"  Sure enough, all of the shoes are tumbling in the surf, and we race to grab them.  Stinkerbell is now short one slide.  Nothing we can do, so we continue on...

MadHatters turn, and she is a tween.  Nothing makes her want to do this, and I understand.  I was almost 12 once too.  But I throw her friend A behind me and tell her to be as silly as she can.  This is the biggest smiles I have gotten in days...

A few of them together and I get the brilliant idea to allow them to play.  I really didn't think that through because, for some reason, I thought they would splash around and jump a few times, and we could go back to taking a few fun pictures.  How wrong I was.  These girls were soaked in seconds - and I mean soaked...

I gathered them for one more "formal" picture to capture the wetness of it all...

And somehow they got even wetter...

After almost losing them in the rocks and then Stinkerbell cutting her foot open on the rocks, we were done.  But I had left without thinking about the fact that they might get wet.  At the beach.  So we had no towels.  Or a way to get sand off of us.  And out of every nook and cranny, it could get into.  So we walked back to the parking lot after showering off in the public shower.  And I opened my emergency roadside kit and took out the silver blanket.  I spread it on the backseat, wrapped the girls in it to keep them from freezing and sped home.  

I dropped a very wet and sandy A back at her house and threw my girls in my shower as soon as we walked in the door.

I now keep clean towels in my trunk.  Lesson learned.