Loud Silence (original) (raw)

This weekend we went to Gulf Shores and had a blast.

We started the day off by visiting the "Little Zoo that Could" as seen on Animal Planet. www.alabamagulfcoastzoo.com I think this was the first time that Anna was ever afraid of a bok bok. One stuck it's neck out of the cage and nibbled at her toes while she was in her stroller. :P

Afterwards we went to the grocery store and got fruit and sandwhich fixings which we then took to the beach.

We ate underneath the pavillion then packed up to walk to the beach.

Anna enjoyed herself thoroughly in the sand, so much so that she was totally oblivious to the bok boks that dave was luring to her with potato chips. Big Ben and Little Ben also had a blast in the sand starting off with sand castles. It was hard to get pics of them because they were always bent over.

Granny Smith pretty much stayed in the shade of the umbrella, but she did come out to the water with Gramma Karen and myself.

Dave played chase the kids, and feed the bok boks. Bok bok by the way is Anna's word for anything that resembles a bird.

The water was awesomely warm. Gramma Karen, Dave's Mom, and I walked out to about where the water came to our necks and just floated in the waves. The water was so warm it was like bath water. The waves beating us on our backs as they broke the surface had us giggling like school girls. We were truly embraced by Mother Ocean as she took our stress away. Our only complaint was the sting of the seaweeds which we jokingly said were exfoliating us to the extreme and we would probably end up being allergic to but we were fine. I suppose it could have been worse as we were really in shark territory, but sharks were the last thing on our mind at the time, ok maybe not quite, we did make a few comments about it. Something along the lines of ... if a shark ate me right now I wouldn't care because this feels oh so good. Other than seaweed we hardly noticed any life at all. However when the tide changed and we started feeling the cool water from deeper out moving in, we decided it was probably time to go back to shore and the real world. I wish Dave could have enjoyed it with us, but he didn't think I was going to get into the water and didn't bring the clothes to get in. Bummer.

At one time we got too close to the group of college students next to us and overheard part of their conversation which had us laughing for the remainder of the day...

The boys were telling the girls ... You know why the ocean is so salty don't you?
Of course the girls answered , No ... why?
The boys answered ... Because of Sperm Whales, as big as they are can you imagine how much sperm they waste into the water?

Gramma Karen and I both decided that was WAY TMI hehe, but we still laughed at the Sperm Whale kids for quite some time.

Big Ben caught a couple of shrimps by digging in the sand.

When we got back to shore, Gramma Karen and I dug a hole in the sand and made somewhat of a wading pool for Anna.

All in all it was a great experience and one I hope to duplicate again very soon. It was most definitely something I needed, in fact it was LONG PAST DUE.

Sad to think we live this close to the beach and that is the first time I have actually been out in the water like that since 1984!!!!