Time To Go To The Beach!

On July 26th my MOPS group had a summer get together at the movies. I love going to the summer movies because they are only a dollar. Yes they are movies that you've probably already seen, but it's so fun to go see a movie on the big screen. Also.... there's popcorn! 

Since we were seeing the movie at The Landing in Renton I figure why not make a day of it and head over to the park afterwards. The movie started at 10am so I knew it would be around noon when it was over. I packed us a lunch....we didn't really eat much though....did I mention the popcorn? We had the whole set up with the beach blanket, camping chairs and sand toys. The only thing that was missing....

was the sun! 

The weather report said it was going to be in the upper 70's, but there was no sun in sight when we first got to the beach. Since it was so cloudy I actually had the kids just play on the playground first so I could decided whether or not I was actually going to let them swim. 

After playing for 30 minutes or so you could tell it was getting muggier so I knew the sun would eventually make an appearance. 

I figured the kids would play in the sand and not necessarily go in the water until the sun was shining, but that didn't stop them one bit. 

They had to start digging rivers and tributaries and then those needed to be filled in with water. 

There was a lot of engineering work go on with this project. The kids were having to deal with the water eroding the sides of the river banks and then they were damming up different parts of the river to make the water flow a certain way. It was quite educational! 

After the fun of building rivers wore off they decided to jump in the water. 

The air was really warm, but still without the sun shining I knew I wasn't getting in that water! 

Thankfully after a couple hours the clouds completely vanished and the sun came out in all its glory. We headed over to the snack shack and Jack was so sweet he bought Zeke some candy since he didn't have enough money in his spend envelope to get any. 

I waded in the water every once and then to cool off, but for the most part I just loved sitting there watching them use their imagination. 

I did not want to have a repeat of last year where I burnt my legs to a crisp so I think I applied sunscreen at least 3 times to my legs. 

I also made sure to reapply sunscreen to the kids shoulders. 

Thankfully not one person had any bit of sunburn anywhere! Yahoo! 

The big kids were having so much fun swimming out in the water. Ella and Jack did not want anything to do with their life jackets this year. They love going underwater so I wouldn't want a life jacket either. 

Zeke finally got brave enough to venture out deeper in the water than I ever think he has ever gone. 

I still think of him as my baby so seeing him do big kid things always surprises me! 

For most of our stay at the beach there was a Boys & Girls Club group to our right. They were having loads of fun digging and digging. I think we were trying to see who could dig the biggest hole. When it was time for them to go there were these huge holes left in the ground so we thought it would be fun to fill them with water. 

It took many, many buckets and many, many trips back and forth to fill up the holes. It was most definitely good exercise! 

Jack's hole that he was working on was further away from the water and his just wouldn't fill up. I'm think it was because the sand around it was just soaking up the water since it doesn't normally get saturated. 

More water!!! 

It's a little pool of mud! 

The kids wanted to see how deep the pool was. They were thinking it would be as deep as it was when they dug the hole, but of course the sides of hole had slowly been collapsing....there's that darn erosion again....so they were quite surprised when they jumped in and found out how shallow the water was.  

Let me see how deep it is! 

No...let ME see how deep it is! 

I absolutely love coming to Coulon Park and I love that kids love it as well. This is a park that has so many memories since I grew up in Renton. It's fun to be making such great memories with my kids here as well. 

I think we finally decided to pack up and head home around 3:30 and by we I mean me! 

We had hours of fun and by the time I got home I was totally wiped out. Going to the beach with 4 kids is no joke. We have another summer movie day coming up in August with my MOPS group so I'm planning on doing this same thing again as long as the weather is nice. We've got to get out and enjoy this sun shine while we can!