beach babes

The beaches on along the gulf shore in Texas may not be the most picturesque, but when you have three kids, a bunch of sand, a bucket, a boogie board and some waves, the possibilities are endless. Add to that an additional 24 adults and 24 children, and you have yourself one crazy beach party.

This past weekend our family, along with 12 others in which Catcher was the oldest child present, braved the town of Port Aransas, TX where the sea lice attacked the boogie boarders in the water and the sea gulls attacked any child with a kernel of popcorn on the shore. Why would we punish ourselves in such a way, you may ask? To be honest, the trip is more than just a social experiment. It's a social gathering of our Sunday school class that has evolved into this wild tradition; I would be bummed if we had to miss it.

Every year someone is pregnant or about to be pregnant or somebody's baby is having his/her first trip to the beach. We share laughter and tears (the tears mostly belong to the children, but sometimes the ladies get emotional after a couple bottles of wine). There's always some guy drinking butter on the guys night out, and the women have to wait an hour for a table at the only "decent" restaurant in town when they get their own night away from the madness. You return home sunburned and bloated--because someone insists on bringing a year's worth of Doritos along, which you just can't resist no matter how "healthy" you are on a day-to-day basis--and discover sand everywhere. But establishing tradition is great for the little ones, and you just can't beat the feeling of parental solidarity. Because we're all in this crazy thing together--let's try to make it fun while we can.

Next up for the Wheat family? A lake vacation in the great state of Wisconsin (I'm labeling our "vacations" this year as beach, lake, mountains). I'll be off the grid for the next 10 days, which means I'm not bringing my computer along, so you should expect to see something from me by the end of July with the way I've been keeping up (or not) with the blogging lately. In the meantime, enjoy these lovely pictures of the Texas gulf coast, and try not to judge if your own beach vacation includes waters that are slightly less brown in color: