Tradtions on the Beach

We don't go to the beach "every" year, however, we have gone with our family to the beach for many years. And with those trips to the beach evolved traditions. We always pack games; card, dominoes and now toys for the kiddos to play with. We always eat in, making that dreaded trip to the grocery store immediately upon our arrival and we always go searching for sand crabs on the beach at night after dark. This year's beach trip was no different, with the exception of us doing our grocery shopping before we left home...now THAT is a new tradition that I believe we will be doing every time from here on out. And, of course, we take family photos at the end of our trip.

We cook in for a good reason. Put simply, thirteen people in a restaurant just isn't a good idea. It is difficult to get seated, the kids get bored waiting for the food to arrive and well...you can only imagine the cost involved in a meal like that! Cooking at our rental house, however, is also quite an adventure with everyone wanting to pile into the kitchen at one time and attempt to "help". I snapped just a few photos this year to give you an inside peek at how vacation meal time goes for us.

This particular night we were cooking a relatively simple meal: Tacos. Caitlin was making guacamole and I was making some chicken for me...

Robby, who said he was NOT going to do any of the cooking that night could not stand that Caitlin was apparently not chopping her onions finely enough. Hmmm...looks like he WAS in the kitchen after all.

Sarah's contribution was to grate the cheese. I'm not sure what Mimi was doing. I suppose she just wanted to be where everyone else was.

Even the babies wanted to be in there...waiting for someone to throw them a morsel.

And David? David was playing the role of "The Chairman". Or whomever. He was acting like we were all in one of those cooking competitions on television saying things like, "You only have FIVE minutes to plate." And "Look who's jumping in to give an assist on chopping those onions." You get the idea, I'm sure.

After dinner that night, we grabbed a pail and some flashlights and set out to initiate all the kids into our beach tradition of searching for sand crabs!

Yep...Young and old alike went along on this night time adventure!

And then Thursday night was the night set aside for our family photos since Caitlin, Kevin and Holli had to fly back to Cleveland Friday evening. It was quite an unorganized, chaotic event but that wasn't totally unexpected! However, through all the chaos, I managed to get some pretty good shots...