Beach Trip 2010--don't say I didn't warn you

Our 2010 Port Aransas Trip.  Loverboy and Little Miss are heading down with the beach necessities for our first day in the water.  I'm telling you right now, if you choose to proceed, go get something cold to drink and maybe a little snack...there are a lot of pictures!

The Barnes Family Beach Stick.  It predates me, so I can't explain it.

The Beach Monster That Destroyed (sandcastle) Tokyo.

It was pretty seaweedy the first couple of days.

Kite-flying on the beach--a must!

The view from my beach chair.

She can pick up on the tinny whining of the ice cream truck from two miles away even with a stiff seabreeze.

And a stiff seabreeze there was.  I don't think there was a day that we had a tent-thing that it didn't fly over or come undone at some point.  Here, Cousin Ann and Cousin Mike are saving the tarp from becoming a kite.

Miss Manners eating her spaghetti at Marcel's.

Day 2 at the beach--starting with a little beachcombing.

Day 2 view from my beach chair.

Loverboy was king of the grill for us on the beach.  Your choices:  sausage or hotdogs...everyday.

Here comes the ice cream truck again.  There was also a tamale truck!  If SaraBeth and I up production of our tamales and freeze them, maybe Papa will let us borrow the (ancient) van and we can stay all summer at the beach!

A Dora ice cream bar with creepy gumball eyeballs. 

Our most ambitious sandcastle to date.

Behold!

View from my beach chair.  A very comfortable spot from which I was loathe to wander too far.

There was much playing of washers.

Ann made Anne a tunnel for her car.

Little Miss buried her plastic sand shovel...and forgot where.  So we improvised with a barbeque spatula.

MawMaw and Cousin Ann.

Don't say I didn't warn you!  This is only the end of Day 2!  Take a break.  Stretch a little.

Day 3 we decided to take in the sights of Port A after breakfast.

Shark!

What's missing?  Oh, yeah!  A snowcone!!

Rock-n-roll flavor--kind of grape-y.

We'd just had breakfast, so I wasn't up to this...but NEXT year...yes, next year.

A charming tableau.

Next stop, seafood shop.  The bright orange one.

Mmmmm.  Shrimps.

Then we spent a couple of more hours on the beach.

Ahh...Mama like.

Little Miss almost lost her goggles to a seagull.  Loverboy and she were playing catch/fetch with them, when Jonathan Livingston swooped in and picked them up.  Little Miss charged him, splashing away, and he abandoned the booty.  Little Miss 1, Seagull 0.

De-sanding for the last time this summer, sigh.

Two things about this picture:  1) I don't worry about fancifying up for the beach, 2) I had the hardest time remembering our room number until the day we left, when I realized it's the same as our P. O. box number.  Sheesh.

Loverboy was beside himself with glee on our last night because he got to eat at his very most super favorite restaurant in Port A--Pelican's Landing.

Then Little Miss got the camera.

The view from our room.

We took the ferry out of town--I'm not even going to get into the adventure of traveling down or the trip back.  Let's just say I've been back nine days and only now found the energy to blog about it.  It was a fantastic Texas Gulf vacation!

Until next year, Seagull.