You know your day is going to go well when you start by hitting that local vacation hot spot, Wal-Mart. Breakfast was no less exciting: McDonald's in Wal-Mart. But it gets better! After ordering and sliding in to one of the 4 mini-booths with our tray of food, we distributed food and then watch my coffee go flying straight at my my toddler, strapped into his highchair! Ugh... I'll let the guilty part off the hook this time but it's straight to parent court for proper consideration next time.
Sufficient food has been procured to cover the majority of the meals for the week, including Thanksgiving dinner. Yep, we are going to attempt to rotisserie a turkey breast in our mini-oven (all the way from home) and fix the trimmings in about a 4x4 kitchen. Should be a good family experience.
Another reason for the shopping goes back to our desire to lessen our impact on the environment. It can be shocking just how much waste is generated supporting tourists. Meals in fast-food restaurants generate a lot of extra waste that does not go into recycling programs.
I think my daughter may be getting a better idea on how lucky she is at home. We've discussed how our resort rooms are as big as many of the homes people live in daily and how this demonstrates we can live with less of the creature comforts typically surrounding us.
So after we picked up the necessities, we came back, over-stocked the diminutive cabinets and refrigerator and proceeded to the beach. It was time to just be out in nature and both kids had a blast. My son, not exactly stable on his feet right now, decided to charge a wave and tripped over a tidal pool; face-planing in some cold water before I could catch him.
My daughter, giving up on the initial plan to build a giant sand castle, decided charging the waves would be more fun. Thankfully she has a healthy dose of self-preservation and stopped when the first cold wave gently tickled her toes. From there the two of us made trips for wet sand and water to the ocean's edge mostly safely. My son took a rake of the sand toy size and combed the beach, randomly, squealing with delight.
Eventually my daughter just had to go challenge a wave directly and head-on. Of course, the wave won, but she was delighted to have tried. I was there with her so she didn't get pulled away and I hope that telling her about how to stand against the wave helped a little. Apparently, between attempts at standing in the waves she was telling my wife about what I was telling her, so maybe it will sink in for more than this one day. Thankfully my son decided waves were not his thing and didn't venture out so that only one of the parents (me) had to be worried about tracking a kid in the waves.
It was a bit chilly -- although to a northerner, not as cold as the locals would describe it -- and even with running around the kids turned purple. So we headed back to the resort, dried off, washed off, ate a later lunch and grabbed a well-deserved nap. My wife doesn't nap and I only took a short nap, but the kids really needed it.
When the kids woke it was nearly dinner time, especially with the kids still wanting to swim in the pool yet today. So we acted like bums and let the kids watch some TV while dinner was prepared. After cleaning up dinner, we changed into swimsuits and went to the inside pool at the resort. It was fun to be in the pool with the kids again.
My son has decided that he can direct the play, dictating which of the little games he learned from the YMCA he wanted us to do, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. The level of enjoyment expressed in his nearly crazed eyes was refreshing. He's going to like swimming this winter. It was no surprise that my daughter was happily splashing around.. She's lost a little of the form of her strokes but her strength has improved. She was teetering on the edge of moving up a level in her lessons but this extra strength should push her over the edge. We will likely still keep her in the same class one more time for reinforcement and refinement of her strokes again, but I don't believe that she'll have any problem in the teachers eyes when it comes to moving up after that.
After about an hour of swimming it was time to return to the room and call it a night.
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