castles in the sand

...or something like that.

the fog finally burned off and warren and i went to go play "soccer ball" on the beach. daddy had to go to a meeting in jackson, so we were avidly trying to keep ourselves busy (and out of the lonely condo). we had already gone to the barber shop, the bookstore, AND chick-fil-a, so it was this or turn on the tv. and it was too nice out for that!

wee man was none too interested in playing soccer once we actually got to the beach, however. he was far more intrigued with burying the soccer ball again. and i have to admit, it makes a pretty impressive mountain.



here's the engineer, deep in thought:



luckily, he got bored with that soon, because for mom, it's reee-ally boring to bury the entertainment. so we let the waves chase us a bit:



and then we started looking for...



well, anything that would hold warren's interest, i suppose! it turned out to be seashells today.



this is warren's collection:



and this is mommy's:



i am sure there is something profound about how warren carefully gathered the broken, colorful and texturally varied shell pieces versus how i gravitated towards (and arranged them thus) incrementally increasing in size, perfectly plain, whole, matched, ordinary and orderly shells.

but it escapes me.

we dumped them all onto the shell mountain anyway!



it was quite a haul! as the sun started setting, we gave up our exploits and went up to make dinner. i asked warren if he wanted to bring the shells (silently dreading he would say yes, for how on earth was i going to fit all of those in my pockets??), but he quite simply said "nope." and ran towards the condo. oh well! maybe we'll go check on it tomorrow and see if it's still there.

and if not, we'll just make another!

****************************


...utterly changing the subject, how did this little guy



turn into this one in less than a year?



those brown shorts are now nearly an inch above his knee, and the elastic/button-tightening strip things in the waist are let ALL the way out. that shirt hasn't fit him in months, either.

sigh. i'm officially old.

and broke - do they ever stop growing?