Stacer Days: To the beach

Boys, meet the beach. We arrived in Port Aransas at our beach house rental and about twenty minutes later, this happened...

What can we say, he is a full throttle bruiser.

...but it was nothing that Daddy could not fix.

On our way to pick up milk, we saw "off-road" golf carts all over the place. Apparently in the five years since we have been down there, this is the new thing. It is a brilliant idea, shuttle back and forth without getting sand all over everything, well at least you will spare the car. So, we landed a nice golf cart for our stay...

That's me doing top speed. Don't worry, it didn't take Alan long to find and adjust the governor.

We went out for an exploratory mission that afternoon...

First order of business, lose the shoes.

The beach and water were cleaner than Alan or I have ever seen it.

A quick "before" picture while they were still clean.

Let the digging commence.

Digging is one of our boys' favorite things to do. They have a whole collection of shovels and buckets that get used in our yard at home, so the beach was perfect for them... endless amount of sand and mud and get as dirty as you want.

Back at the house...a little rest, a little more play...

And an after dinner golf cart drive around town...

The boys were pretty excited about this shark.

And a little more playing in the sand...

Adam's odd posture and facial expression are the result of growling. He growls now to show his protest.

The next morning we got up early and at breakfast ready to go back out before the sun got too intense.

Alan lost in deep thought.

We stayed out for a couple of hours but I don't have any photos because we were too busy playing. Afterward we took another drive through town.

To see boats...

And check out the playground at the ferry park.

After lunch and naps we went out again. Once Adam got used to the water, all that he wanted to do was scoop up water and dump it back out, let a wave wash over his legs and repeat. You'll find I just could not get enough of him... he is made of some pretty cute stuff.

Aaron is not as willing to pose for photos and generally pulls out something quite goofy. He dug deep for this one...

New mission...build a "lake," far enough from the water to make for a safe zone, yet close enough that a small channel could refill it periodically. Queue Daddy for digging.

I think they were making coffee.

Lake expansion.

After naps the boys became very interested in the road construction going on outside the house. They watched and asked all sorts of questions...

Sunset drive on the beach...

Quick stop for a photo...

A little video documentation...

Next morning...same idea, with a new lake, but much more intense. We spent a little longer on the beach that morning because it would be our last beach outing.

He sat in here for over an hour straight. Thankfully a large wave would clean it out periodically.

The next morning we headed out and made a stop in Corpus Christi at the Texas State Aquarium. The boys are huge animal fans right now, so we knew they would love it. We arrived shortly after it opened and were one of about three families there, which was great.

Adam: "They're going in circles!"

Adam: "Can I touch the shark?" Aaron: "What happens if you touch a shark?"

Adam was upset at first with that guy on the bottom. He never really moved and starred at Adam the whole time, probably thinking he would taste better than the dog food they just fed him.

Then there was a jungle-ish animal area...

Aaron: "What happens if you touch him?"

They were having a discussion about a catfish I think.

The wall is covered with a photo-mural, so Adam is actually staring into a wall... which makes this photo quite funny.

They were pretty excited to see "Dory."

Then outside to the dolphin pool. Since there was no one else around, the boys were able to talk with the trainer and "help" with the tricks.

The USS Lexington in the background. We look forward to taking the boys there in a couple of years... it is epic, so we'll wait until when they can last a little longer and are not so clumsy.

Stingray pool.

Adam has a thing for turtles, so he was pretty excited to see these guys...

He kept running back to them and eventually sat down in front of the glass.

I had a video of our time at the aquarium to insert here... however it seems to be giving me some trouble, perhaps it is too large. So I'll work on that later and get it up in a separate post.