Day at the Beach

Hampton Beach, NH

May 19th, 2012

With 80 degree weather it's prime time to start spending our weekends at the beach. This year it is much more exciting to see Zoey explore. Last year, we were ecstatic if she made any reaction at all to the water, or sand on her feet, or anything at all; but now she is totally ready to explore... and explore she did. At first she would not even get her feet in the sand. We put her in her little chair to sit in the shade with us for a bit and she would not get off the chair or even put her feet down :) (You can see her little chair in the 2nd pic)  Then we set her in the sand and played with her to show her that that's what you do at the beach. 

It took her a total of 2 seconds to realize she was seriously missing out by sitting in that chair for so long!

 

 So we played! We dug holes, filled up buckets and made built sand pies, buried Zoey's legs and then daddy's legs in the sand! You know, all the things you just HAVE to do!

Then she wanted set off to explore the rest of the beach. Walking was a bit hard for her in the sand at first, plus I think she liked the feeling the sand as she crawled anyway! So she crawled all over! She would have crawled the length of the beach if we'd let her :) But we kept calling for her to come back, so she did.  

Then it was time to test the water. Daddy and Zoey went first and then came back to take me out with em.

 

The water was FRIGID!!! Just looked it up: 56 degrees!!! Yeah, I'd say too cold for even my toes but Zoey thought otherwise! She wanted to run out and swim like there was no tomorrow. 

Daddy took her out a little further. 

 

(Below is a video but it won't upload) She was literally running to get further out! It was sooo cute!

You can kinda tell by this pic that she is trying to run. She is definitely a water baby!

You can't really tell but Zoey just got all the way in. The waves even splashed in her face. Finally I think she realized she was starting to get cold! :) 

So she ran to explore anything and everything she could. Pointing and waving to things she was finding  in the sand! :) 

 

Time for good ol seaweed! 

 

Then we checked out the rocky area. 

She got so sandy during her explorations so we went back in the water for a bit. By then she was cold and we had to get her wet clothes off and get her all dry and warm! She was so cute and cuddly while we warmed up!

We even watched one of her favorite music videos, a beach video: "That's what makes you Beautiful" by One Direction! She LOVES them! :) (and of course Justin Bieber) 

Then we got her all dressed and played a bit longer before leaving the beach for the day! 

 

Of course we topped our day off by driving on the 1A all the way up the coast to our favorite town of Portsmouth. It's probably our favorite drive ever! We love it!!!  It's so beautiful and it's also fun to see all the beach mansions that go all the way up the coastline. We window shopped and stopped our favorite lil stores. I bought a million new headbands from Toko's, my fav store out there! No really... a million :) Don't worry, I'll wear them all! Then we ate at Matt's favorite place: the Portsmouth Brewery. They have his favorite pulled pork sandwich! Then we headed home saying to each other and to ourselves: What a day! What a blessed day!