Bahia de Kino & Lots of Sand

One example of the festive artwork left in the sand...
Everyone getting brave enough to step into the water...
"Will you bury me?"
More artwork...
The 3 Amigos... scowling mightily...
We brought back a bucket-and-a-half of gorgeous beach shells...
Plenty of good photo opportunities...
Daniel kept getting stuck... thankfully Jeff got him out... before the pantalones made a final descent... =)
Pretty much we all looked this cool... but Bill might win the beauty contest prize...!
Katie & I made a stash of "sandballs" instead of "snowballs"... this is how you celebrate December on the beach!

Thursday we took a trip to Bahia de Kino - a present the kids had received for Christmas, which included a bus ticket (on our super-duper yellow school bus) and a coupon for a Happy Meal at McDonald's. Let me say before I even begin this post that I am grateful to those individuals who let me use their pictures... they (fortunately) did not "lose" their camera (meaning it was stuck between my bed and the wall) and have to forego the pleasure of happily snapping photos right and left... entonces, gracias!

So... we arrived at the beach after a 3-hour drive which included a LifeSaver contest (with some of the contestants managing to keep their LifeSaver alive for longer than an hour... it was truly amazing), a creative fuzzy wire contest (some of these creations were definitely magical), kids praise songs (once again creatively embarked upon, and embellished by the front half of the bus being three measures ahead of the back of the bus), and snacks (of course "snacks"... we're AC's!!!).

The water was beautiful, the sand was gorgeous, the sun was shining... but we all about froze after plunging into the icy water. I've never seen shivering like I saw that day (kids and adults both), and the subsequent trips back into the water even when your lips are completely purple, goosebumps look like goose eggs, and suddenly your eyelashes seem to be shedding frozen shards. But really... it's the beach... it's not like you're not going to go in for a brief swim... or two, or three, or...

The kids played in the water, helped Brian Ricketts build a gi-normous sand castle, went on a walk, changed clothes three or four times (since they kept getting their "dry" clothes wet again), and found great amusement in throwing food up into the air for the birds (until we warned them that great flocks of birds circling overhead was likely to result in those same birds haciendo popo - you know what this means... lol - on someone's head).

Speaking of birds, I was drying off on the sand at one point, eyes closed, when I heard the muffled, treacherous sounds of fifty-some birds surrounding me, beady eyes surveying my ten little toes as a potential food source (they weren't saying "mine, mine, mine" like in Finding Nemo, but I think they might have been saying it in Spanish). Not wanting to share with them (since I am, admittedly, partial to keeping all ten of those little toes), I sat up, glared ferociously at all of them, and yelled "Birma!" at the top of my voice (if you aren't a Monty Python fan, let me just explain that this is a quote from one of their penguin-on-the-telly skits). This at least seemed to startle them away, and I happily laid back down, dug my toes into the sand (covered at least), and waited for the next potential threat to come...

All in all it was a beautiful day, and I believe the kids (and adults) had a great time... despite the fact that everyone has the potential of sneezing and snuffling right through the New Year! Maybe we'll go back when it's just a little bit warmer next time...!

p.s. (CVE has no connection to the Internet right now because of an accident which took out the main pole... which also means phone lines aren't working. Hopefully all will be back to normal in a week or so. We'll keep in better touch then!!!)