The Beach Experience

I say beach experience and not 'ocean experience' because I realize why people don't say we are vacationing at the ocean....it is a scary place! The boys loved Orange Beach but not so much the actual ocean. Oh, they liked being chased by the waves on the shore, stepping into the sinking sand and collecting water in buckets for their holes they dug to China all day but as far as getting inside the ocean - no way! We did that the first day except daddy was still bringing things down to the beach and mommy took the boys into the water. What a great idea for the timid one to conduct the first ocean experience. Sure enough I saw a giant (in my eyes) jellyfish right by our feet and mangaged NOT TO SCREAM but calmly said, "oh boys, let's get out of the water...there is a jellyfish" then I tried to back track and sound all fascinated by the stinging hellish creature looming past my offsprings bodies but they were onto me! They freaked out after realizing what they were looking at and refused to get back into the ocean. It didn't help that we saw about 100 more of those ministering so called fish along the shoreline. And yes, we all at some point did get back into the ocean to play only to all be stung by a jellyfish! But to my disapointment we didn't have to pea on anyone's wounds (you know that's what they say do now) but rather we all toughed it out except one boy we were with who screamed so loud and long that many passersby gave us their 'theory' on how to cure a jellyfish sting and then someone did finally give us their solution of vinegar in a bottle she carried with her. That did help - so bring plenty of it if you go to the 'ocean'.

Swimming in the pool was a good passtime but they all loved digging - there was much help from the two Dad's who dug for about 30-45 mts each beach visit. I swear the hole was 4 or more feet deep. We even had a passerby tell us we MUST fill in that hole b/c the sea turtles were coming in to lay their eggs and they would die b/c of our hole! So, we did indeed fill it in the first day but after that we got lazy and happily never saw any caught sea turtles in our hole the following morning!