Yeah, so I’ve been totally tripping down memory lane lately, but they’re important stories for the girls to remember, so stuff it, okay? (Just kidding! I love you, bloggy audience!) Er, so I was saying. It’s been cooler, finally, lately. And even as the first lovely days of fall have me reaching for my yoga pants with sweet, sweet relief, I’m finally uploading my summer vacation pictures and reminiscing. Like that time we took the girls to the beach? So. much. fun.
Notice how sand-free that blanket is? Yeah, that’s because Auntie Kim is the Sand Gestapo. You do NOT get sand on her blanket. Or else the Sand Gestapo will do a mean impersonation of the Queen of Hearts and be all OFF WITH YOUR HEADS! For reals. But! At that particular moment in time, there was no sand on the blanket, no crazy seagulls chasing my sister or making swirly holes in the sand, and it was alllll relaxed. See how happy and warm we look? Peaceful. Happy. Perfect.
This is why I love having a big family. There are lots of aunts and uncles for the girls to con into doing something. It was minutes, MINUTES I tell you, before Bee and Gracie had talked Auntie Rhi into going swimming with them. And that water was COLD, people. Fuh-ricking c-o-l-d. (I know because the girls soon conned me into getting in, too. Drats.) But hey – the girls were happy and isn’t that what vacations are about? Darn the kids.
I think it is an actual law that Thou Shalt Let The Waves Bury Thy Feet In The Sand when you’re at the beach. The girls lurved it…until one of them just didn’t any more and kinda freaked out that she couldn’t move her feet. See? This is totally why I should write about these things when they happen. Not when it’s 42 ° outside. So then we unstucked someone’s feet and went back into the water. (And esplained for the tenth time why there weren’t any sharks in the water. Because it’s a LAKE.)
This is my sister mocking me and my picture-taking ways. (And Joey dissociating himself from us, just a wee bit. Ooh, or maybe he had been banished because of a sand incident. Quite possible. We like to flagrantly foul each other’s rules. Heh.) But it was okay that Kim was mocking me because shortly thereafter, the seagulls decided they were on Team Katie. See, Kim is Quite Afraid of seagulls. I forget why, other than Kim is weird. So I’d be in the water, helping the girls find rocks – which really meant picking them up off the bottom of the lake with my feet and then bringing them to the surface for inspection – and then Kim would start yelling for me. I’d look over and the seagull was staring at her. Just sitting there, staring. And then he’d hop once or twice, just a little closer. It was hilarious. Then she’d scream for me and I’d have to go chase away the stupid bird. Joey, who could have scared away the bird, was too busy laughing at her to bother helping. (See? with the rule-breaking?) Then I’d go back to the water until the seagull came back. We didn’t have food, Kim didn’t have on Eu de SeagullBait so I have no idea why that bird was so fixated. It could have been seriously creepy if it wasn’t so frickin hilarious.
Soon the girls had fetched half the rocks from the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee to bring back to Grandpa and one of them had tracked too many paths of sand onto the blanket for Kim to quarantine, so we all trekked back to the bathhouse to change. We hit the bumper cars and then grabbed some food on the boardwalk. Ice cream, pizza, and my favorite – fried dough. With everything on it. And can I just say – that’s not as easy to eat as it might seem. I had sugar and cinnamon in my hair, all over my shirt, and I made quite a mess of the boardwalk – see?
That, in no way, does it justice. Passersby were staring. It was awesome.
Yep, messy, sticky, full of laughs and a far cry from the beautiful fall weather we’re having now – that’s what makes it all so perfect.
Tags: vacation, summer, beach, fried dough, Lake Winnipesaukee
October 21, 2011 at 8:02 am |
I love these stories and it is so important to remember them.
Kim is afraid of seagulls because they are closely related to ROUSs and she is smart.
October 21, 2011 at 1:53 pm |
I”m not sure i can blame you for forgetting this part that i have to add, because i cant even remember if it happened when you were in the water with me and the girls lol. anyways, it has to do with the seagull, the uncle, and the breaking of the rules…sort of. anyways the girls and i were in the water looking for good rocks and uncle joey was sitting right where he was in the picture, but then he got up to go put money in the meter? get some water? he left. and the next time i looked back at Fort Sands Gestapo that sneaky seagull (who KNEW auntie kim didnt like him. he had to have known!) was sitting up on the wall where uncle joey had been sitting. i pointed this out to the girls and of course i tried to convince them after they asked where uncle joey was, that he… had turned into a seagull. and being the smarty pants that they are they played it off like i was being “just too silly” as Bee decided. unfortunately gracie’s imagination getting the best of her was present all over her face when she asked “but umm…where did uncle joey really go? cause that seagulls not him….right?” =0] as well as when they spotted him walking back to the Fort and they yelled “there he is! i knew he wasnt a seagull!”
October 21, 2011 at 9:32 pm |
Sooo much fun! I didn’t know that Lake Winnipesaukee existed- and after all these years of reading/teaching “Our Town.” Who knew?!! Now I need to catch up on life in Texas!!