Mine mine mine, all mine: Beach trip 2007

The characters:

Me: The oldest sister. Mom to Drew, age 2 1/2. Often heard exclaiming, "I'm going to count to three..."

Jennifer: The middle sister. Mom to six-month-old Annagrace. Hasn't slept through the night in a very long time.

Laura, AKA "La-La": The youngest sister. Not yet a mom, and after a week with her niece and nephew, is pretty sure motherhood is faaaar off.

Nana: The grandmother. General overseer and planner of Beach Trip 2007.

Drew: Two and a half. Fearless. Hates being dirty.

Annagrace: Six months. Smiles often. Doesn't enjoy sleeping at night.

The scene:

Seagrove Beach, Florida. On the Gulf coast, halfway between Panama City and Destin. Oceanfront condo.

The first thing that happened is this: I broke my small right toe. I tripped over a stroller as I was moving it into the condo. Anybody with any reasonable degree of grace and balance would have simply bruised themselves, but I actually broke an appendage. Granted a small and ultimately fairly useless appendage, but nonetheless...

OK, so, onward to the pictures:

After figuring out that the mere presence of her cousin Drew would entertain Annagrace for several minutes, we forced him to sit near her while we were getting our swimsuits on. As you can see, he was less than enamored by forced babysitting servitude.

But the important thing was that they were quiet. And relatively still.

Our first sojourn on the sand, and Drew wanted nothing more than to steal our neighbor's buckets. He fussed and cajoled and attempted outright larceny until Nana finally agreed to go get him a bucket of his own.

And then he was OK, until his hands got covered in sand. Drew hates to have anything messy on his hands - he's very OCD about it.

So, after a quick nap...

we moved to the pool, where Drew promptly informed me that he could "do it all by myself, Mama." And he could, with a little help from his "butterfly wings", which he called his "laller-fie" wings.