A Day at the Beach

A couple of Saturdays ago (yes, I'm slow to post) we took our first trip to the beach. We went down to Yumurtalik with just about everyone from church and I am glad we went...even if not everything was great.

We all met up at the BX parking lot to caravan down.  (I think there were seven vehicles.) Since Ben was out of town and I had never driven off base before, our friend Karen offered to drive Yoda (the Toyota) for me. She ended up riding shotgun, though, because I DROVE. Yay me! It was mostly on the autobaun so I did fine. The only issue I had was getting the machine to read my toll card at the first booth we came to.

The beach had quite a bit of trash on it, but most of it was up where we parked the vehicles. A couple people had brought canopies so we had a little bit of shade. I sprayed all the kids and myself with sunblock, and we were off. The kids borrowed boogy boards, toys and googles from our friends and had a great time.  The water was surprisingly warm and there were some nice waves.

 

I didn't get any pictures of Lizzy or Alex because they weren't out of the water much. :)  We swam and played, had a little BBQ, and then swam and played some more. Unfortunately, I didn't reapply our sunscreen after lunch so we all burned...except Keri, who just got darker.  She also didn't spend much time in the water. The waves were a bit much for her.  She enjoyed the sand much more.

 She had sand EVERYWHERE!

There was a stray dog that hung around for most of the afternoon. Luckily, my kids didn't bother with it...the strays here are usually pretty dirty and diseased. Shortly before we left some locals moved their livestock across the beach to a creek. The kids were all so excited to see the cattle, sheep, and even a donkey walking down the beach.

 I was taking a picture of Garret, not the stray...

When we went to leave the day took a bad turn. I hadn't locked the car and someone grabbed our emergency kit (mandatory here) and the diaper bag (probably bummed when the realized what it was) out of the back. I was kicking myself and thinking that Ben was going to be upset with me for not locking up when I realized one of our friends had been robbed as well. Unfortunately, their window had been busted out and they had a lot more important things taken. So I guess we actually got pretty lucky.

So...despite the break-ins and burns (my worst since high school), it was a good day.

We went back down this last Sunday for a baptism. I definitely think we'll be doing Alex's baptism down there in a couple months...How cool is it to get the opportunity to be baptized in the Mediterranean Sea???