Pictures from the TX coast

Here are a couple photos from our trip to Port Aransas last weekend. We were there with our friends and fellow homeschoolers and church members, the Dixon family, which includes three boys. I went with low expectations, since I had been spoiled by the Carolina coast and had been told such varying reports of the Texas beaches, but was pleasantly surprised. No, it wasn't Hilton Head, but the beach was wide and uncrowded in the off-season, the surf just right for our crew, the water not too cold, the trash under control, and the only problem was the ubiquitous man o'wars speckling the beach. (Funny story: the day after we got home, Caroline was with Tim and me in the kitchen and she started squealing, "A jellyfish! A jellyfish!" We looked closer and there on the floor was a smudge of butter, not one inch long, which indeed resembled the general outline of a jellyfish. LOL!) I always find that being at the ocean relaxes me(my MIL says it's something about the negative ions in the air) and quiets my soul. I can walk by the surf's edge and just converse with the Lord, or sit and make sandcastles with the kids with only the rhythm of the tide to keep time. There is, too the connection to some of my more pleasant childhood memories, like the summer I spent two weeks at my grandmothers' beach house on Fire Island and would sometimes get up before anyone else, walk down to the beach, and do a cartwheel or two and then just enjoy being alone with my deep, eleven-year-old thoughts. :-) The solitude was never frightening the way it would seem, say, in the woods. Just comforting. And, now that life is much more complicated, quite timely.