{Padre Island}

We spent the first weekend in August living it up at Padre Island with Dev's parents. It's so beautiful at the beach, especially Gulf Coast beaches because, unlike the Northwest beaches of the Pacific Ocean, the water is warm (really warm) and the sandbars are long. You can wade out for what seems like a mile into the ocean and still feel the sand beneath your feet. It's amazing and peaceful - and horrifying if you've seen Jaws as many times as I have, but whatever. I risked it.

We didn't feel comfortable toting our nice camera to the sandy beach with us so we only have pictures from our hotel room view and from a a sandcastle building we saw down the street from our hotel. But, what the pictures don't show are how much fun we had boogie boarding at the beach. The waves were perfect for it all weekend and Dean was the best boogie boarder of all of us. Seriously, the kid was amazing! He rode the waves for major distances without help and even rode some all the way in to shore. He LOVED it! Eli preferred staying on the sand mostly but managed to allow us to pull him on the boogie boards through the surf along the shore toward the end of our stay. Ava just enjoyed chasing birds and eating sand - babies are so easy to please.