I love the beach! The trip I look forward to all year.

I was so happy that Ruthie and Hannah got to join us for the whole week!

I decided to try to learn all about fill flash on this trip. Meh…The verdict is still out. It’s obviously got it’s limitations. I took one photo of Henry without the flash, and the shadows across his face were definitely much more noticeable, but the bokeh in the background was also nicer. Tradeoffs.

Well…I mean, it definitely made a difference here. With his hat and his back to the sun, we’d never of seen his face.

Okay…enough camera talk. Cute kids playing at the beach!

Wallace got a pretty bad boogie board rash. He also realized that together we failed to pack any shirts for him. lol. So he got a couple of souvenir shirts to wear over and over again.

Ice cream truck! Meredith dropped her first one and came running back over before I even got a chance to pay…

He’s such an old man. He’ll always go for an ice cream sandwhich.

Must be something about youngest children and Sonic…

This was such a long day for parents. I think we had gone to the big slide before coming out to the beach for several hours.

The rest of the photos I have are from our second day of crabbing, and Ruthie took all of them. I have to be honest, she did an amazing job! I love a lot of her photos. So we did two days of crabbing this year because we were planning on a large crowd for stuffed crab night. Good thing crabbing is pretty much my favorite beach house activity!

So, our regular place is under construction. We’ve crabbed in this spot before though. Last year Jen and I crabbed all day and ended up here for the last half of the day.

You stand in the water a lot at this crabbing location.

And there were so many jelly fish. After she got stung the first day, Jen got some fancy pants leggings for the second day!

So, I saw that Jen brought this crab “hook” with her that she said Matt likes to use. I told her it looked ridiculous. But then when all the pots were being used by kids, I decided to give it a try and fell in love with it! I ended up buying my own, and then Jen got me a net for my birthday! It’s such a fun way to crab!

I might look bored, but I’m just very slowly “luring” crabs in.

The kids caught a flounder in one of the crab pots for the first time ever!

And this is the tiniest hermit crab we’ve ever seen.

On the whole, crabbing was a success. Jen only cut her foot once, and I only lost one crab hook to the rocks. So…not bad. Everyone enjoyed the crab. I even learned how to pick them this year.