Myrtle Beach 2011

A few weeks ago we took our now-annual trip to North Myrtle Beach.

If this looks vaguely familiar, it might be because we stayed at this same hotel last summer.

I didn't realize how shiny the spray-on sunblock is until I saw this picture.  It is a must for lunchtime re-application, though.  Saves you from rubbing sand in with your sunblock.

The big boys' first stop Monday morning was the lazy river.  Do you see Joshua in the water pulling Tony along?  That was before the security guard came along and told us all kids had to be in tubes.

Jeremiah was brave enough to float this year, and Tony made sure to protect him from the overhead buckets that dump water on heads:

Jeremiah wanted to wear goggles to get under this umbrella in the baby pool:

 He went under one time, and one time only:

It was overcast the whole first day, which was actually pretty pleasant but didn't make for the best pictures.

It was high tide when we got out to the beach the first time, which meant there was a line of shells at the edge of the water.  This is just a fraction of what we collected:

If you look in the background of this picture, you can make out the line of shells and lots of people collecting them.  High tide also meant the boys had to play in the hot dry sand.  They hauled water up and made the most of it.

(This picture was actually from Tuesday, but it happened both days):

After we went back to our room for lunch, we hit the beach again, and it was low tide.  This created some tide pools out in the middle of the beach.  They were Jeremiah's favorite.  He was brave enough to go out and jump waves this year, but he preferred the calmer waters:

In the tidepools, we spotted a hermit crab, a fiddler crab, some fish, and some other shelled creatures that we couldn't identify.  We didn't manage to photograph any of those, though.

Tony, Joseph, and Joshua all spent some time bodyboarding.  Here is Joseph:

We were really impressed with how fearless Joshua was this year:

Tuesday morning a Canadian family approached us with an offer.  It was their last of ten days at the beach, and they had bought chairs, an umbrella, and a body board that they could not take back on the plane with them.  They sold it all to us for $20.  It was definitely an upgrade from sitting on towels under our sad old umbrella!

(Joseph isn't a bad photographer, as long as you didn't want to see our feet!)