Beach time with Natalie and Chloe!

There is a holiday in Boston called Marathon Day, which is in April, during which the Boston Marathon is run. The temps were supposed to hit 80 degrees, so we decided to hit the beach with Sarah, Natalie, and Chloe. Of course, everyone in the whole world had the same idea since this was the first 80 degree weather for the year, and it happened to fall on a holiday. We started out toward Wingaersheek Beach, which is somewhere we've gone multiple times - beautiful sand, great facilities, food available, etc. We started running into some pretty heavy traffic closer to the beach, and then maybe half a mile from the beach, the traffic just stopped. We sat there for maybe 15 minutes, and there was no movement at all! Some of the cars started turning around and leaving, and you could see every single vehicle was a van or SUV filled with kids and families. Apparently they closed the parking lot to the beach because the beach was full, and they couldn't take any more people! So we eventually turned around too, and thank goodness for smartphones - we found Fort Stage Park in Gloucester, which was relatively close by. Not quite as nice as Wingaersheek, but a perfectly good beach from the kids' point of view.

The full pictures of the day can be found here, but here are a few highlights:

They climbed some huge rocks with Daddy - what big girls!


They really enjoyed picking snails and other little sea creatures off the seaweed covering the rocks and putting them in their pails. UGH. Those poor snails eventually got completely covered with sand, but we dumped them out before we left, so hopefully they were okay.
Of course, they played with the sand a lot:


One drawback was that the bathrooms at this state park weren't open yet (not until Memorial Day), so everyone there (all the people who woke up late and didn't get to Crane Beach or Wingaersheek Beach on time) was looking for a bathroom! We went on a long circuitous route looking for bathrooms all over the beach, and couldn't find any, and eventually, Cecilia accidentally just peed in her swimsuit on the grass. She started walking funny (because her crotch was all wet). And wasn't it nice - Natalie decided to keep her company, and peed in her swimsuit too! So they were both walking funny until we were able to wash them off a bit:



And here's a video of Chloe. I think it was her first beach outing ever!