On Saturday morning, Kathy asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to do that day. “Let me think about it,” I replied. By 10:30am, I’d thought about it, and decided I wanted to go to the beach — about a 3.5 hour drive from San Marcos. Kathy wasn’t up for 7 hours in the car, but helped me get the 3 elder kids packed up, and off we went. On the way down, we alternated between reading books, singing, watching for seagulls, and listening to stories on tape, finally arriving at about 2:30pm, when we pulled off to the first beach we could find.
Much to my surprise, the recent tropical storms blowing through the Gulf of Mexico had dislodged so much seaweed that it had formed 3 foot high mounds all along the shoreline. I had to actually lift the kids over to get them into the water. Once over, Liam was pretty skeptical of the waves at first, but gradually warmed to them over the course of the afternoon. He was jumping around in the shallows without me by the time we left. Emily, of course, dove right in and had a great time hunting for shrimp and crabs in the seaweed drifts with some other kids. Abby never did develop a fondness for the waves, but after some time out in the water was having enough fun to forget to ask if we could go someplace without them.
On Sunday, I took Emily to see The King and I, which was being staged by our local community theater. It was a typical community theater production, with a wildly mixed pool of talent, a cast of thousands, an orchestra that seemed to consist mainly of trombones, and “Siamese” men who were dressed in outfits that late-70’s giggolos would have rejected as too garish, but no less fun for that. Emily hasn’t had much experience with theater yet, so we talked about the different pieces of music, theater customs, the roles of the various people involved, etc.
When we got home, we discovered that Liam had taken the opportunity to give the new cat a haircut while Kathy’s back was turned — one of those situations where parents teeter precariously between grounding for life and uproarious laughter. Kids these days.