At the Beach (Finally!)

IMG_3138, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day holiday and didn't do anything too laborious.

We flew from Birmingham to Tampa on Southwest Friday morning. All hail direct flights! Dad and Ilu picked us up, we had lunch together, and then dad dropped us all off at Tradewinds Resort for the night. It wasn't full, which was great, and Brenden got an afternoon on the beach, which is what he's been begging for all summer ('Tomorrow we go to the beach, ok?' every single damn day). He had a blast chasing seagulls, collecting shells, and digging in the sand. He swam some, but he got saltwater in his eyes and he didn't like the stinging. We showered off and jumped into one of the resort's pools later on.

Saturday morning Ilu and I let Jon sleep in and we took Brenden to the beach for more swimming / digging. I had him sit right where the waves were washing up and I showed him all the little clams that got uncovered and dug their way back into the sand. He was endlessly fascinated by those little guys.

Dad picked us up around 2, and it turns out he had a nefarious motive for not going with us to the resort: he bought a new puppy! He has a cute little boy shih-tzu and they were still deciding on a name when we left.

Sunday Jon, B and I went to Adventure Island, a water park that's part of Busch Gardens. I must admit I have never been to a water park before. I didn't swim much after I was 12 because I was so nearsighted. But I had lasik in 2000 and that was the best money I ever spent. Soon after I took scuba lessons and I was delighted that I could see clearly to the end of the pool! Not to mention 3 feet in front of my face.

Anyways Brenden went nuts jumping into fountains, climbing, swimming, sliding, etc. We had fun in the lazy river, and we all took turns going down a series of very long and twisty slides. once I figured out that you needed to lay down to gain any speed, I thought the slides were terrific, too. Brenden was fearless, dropping down 30-foot tubes that opened up 8 feet up from a pool and dropping into 10 feet of water. He would swim to the ladder and repeat about 20 times. One of us always accompanied him to the top and one of us would wait at the bottom but he never needed help. Every time I would get a little overheated I would jump in, too. After a little hesitation he also jumped off a 10 foot 'cliff'. Some adults were turning away from those jumps after a lost gut-check.

About 3pm Brenden all of a sudden realized he was dead tired and started crying when we tried to get back into the lazy river. A little rest and some candy later we went back to dad's house and relaxed for the rest of the time we were there. Yes, that included some pool time. Brenden is probably growing gills.

While we were walking to our car once we got out of the Birmingham airport on Monday, Brenden asked me "Tomorrow we go to the beach, ok?" He was really upset when I told him we wouldn't be going back for a while.