Easter Weekend On The Island

In an effort to be completely unpredictable, we spent the largest part of the Easter weekend on the beach.

Saturday, we did the normal routine of boogie boarding, building castles, shelling and so forth for a good part of the afternoon.

Later on, the small people found a ghost crab far up the shore, barely moving. Usually, these little guys scurry away from people as fast as they can manage, so it was interesting to see one up close. Thinking it might need sea water to wet its gills, we carried it on a stick out to the water, but unfortunately it sat motionless at the ocean’s edge, all but lifeless.

When the wind picked up late afternoon, the small people requested sanctuary from the elements, so we covered them with sand. Ultimately, this proved to be even more entertaining for LCB and myself than it was for them, our guffawing at the whole thing a by-product of years of marriage, I guess. I can’t imagine how unbearable we’ll be by our 50^th, socially avoided and perhaps even sequestered by our own obnoxiousness.

I’d like to report that we took advantage of one of the Sunrise Easter Beach services so common on so many of the Carolina islands here on Sunday. Quite the contrary, however. We instead chose the latest service our church offered, this one inside the church building, simply because it was the latest service available to us and possibly mankind. In my defense, however, I was up until well past midnight baking cookies and stuffing plastic Easter eggs for the Easter egg hunt to be held after the final service.

I hate it when my defense is highly unconvincing even to myself.

There’s my eldest (on the lower right) at the Easter egg hunt, capitalizing on a tip from one of the hunt organizers to look in the black drainage tubes for some of the larger eggs. We’re so proud of him, the boy who is highly motivated to work smart when chocolate is involved and when working hard is the only other way to acquire large portions of it.

We’re also tickled by the fact that our younger son, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky himself, using not an ounce of strategy or forethought, still managed to wind up with the most coveted egg of all, the egg with a dollar bill inside. The fact that LCB and I also found this highly entertaining is likely another example of the long-married by-product I mentioned earlier.

After we got home that afternoon, I caught baby-girl stuffing candy, candy that I had reserved and hidden for the small people’s Easter baskets they were to receive later that day no less, into a bunch of plastic Easter eggs. She then hid the eggs in various corners around the house, and instituted her own egg hunt for the family. I praised her and then cautioned her to try to remember where she had placed all of the eggs, so that we wouldn’t miss any and wind up attracting bugs to the long-forgotten candy.

I’d be hard pressed to come up with more futile directions to give to a mere five-year-old, wouldn’t I?

However, to her credit, she took my caution to heart, and returned to (hopefully) each egg, placing a purple Hershey kiss beside each one, to make them more noticeable.

Just when I think she’s done everything there possibly is to establish herself deep within The Land of Adorable, she strikes deeper.

We spent the rest of the afternoon out on the beach, the boys waffling over whether to fully submerge themselves, given especially the windiness again on the beach that day.

Monday gave rise to The Boogie Slide. Some recent tides have left a ledge of sand out on our beach, so the small people grabbed some of our infamous broken boogie boards and used them to slide down the sand ledge. Initially, they spent quite some time trying to figure out how to position themselves and the board to maximize the slide.

In the end, they decided that falling down the ledge in a heap was significantly more entertaining than increasing their sliding speed, regardless of how many times one was inadvertently head-butted or gut-elbowed.

Ultimately, I guess the apples don’t fall far from the trees when it comes to deciding where we find our entertainment as a family.