Weekends by the Water

It was such a long and busy weekend; I can't say it was a bad weekend since we had lots of fun but it sure felt long.  Most of it was spent by the water; both at the lake and the ocean.

We woke on Saturday to our oldest boy telling us the basement was flooded.  Our hot water heater had broken throughout the night and we did have a pretty big puddle of water to clean up.

We had to make a trip to the store to buy a new one and the two younger boys came with us (Ian was at work with his grandfather).  They were complimented on their manners and good behavior while we were out shopping but mostly they stayed out of the way playing their handheld video games while we shopped around for a few appliances.  

Once home, I started getting ready for some company.  Ian invited a couple of friends over for the afternoon to play in the lake and I asked Alec to help me make some cookies.

We read the recipe together and worked on making up a batch of chocolate chip.  It didn't hurt that I told him the one making the cookies always gets to sneak a bite or two of chocolate chips before the cookies are done!  He read and measured and we had some pretty tasty cookies to enjoy. 

We found a bird's nest in our shed that afternoon and the boys all examined it.  There were egg shells left behind too but we weren't able to identify what kind they were.

We did notice quite a few different materials that were used to make the bird nest.   Alec informed me that other birds might want to use the nest too so he went to look for a perfect tree to put it in. 
    

The boys had a great fun playing in the water with Ian's friends.  We had a few reminders about manners, keeping our hands to ourselves, and not wrestling in the water.  Ian, in particular seems to forget he's so much bigger than his brothers and even his friends and is often much rougher with everyone else than he should be.

We took them tubing off the boat and everyone who wanted to got to go tubing.  They begged us to take them to the bridge and let them jump off.  I cringe watching my boys tube, jump off bridges and pretty much anything else where I see injuries and hospital visits as a possibility but wow, they all just love it!



We headed to the shore on Sunday and spent a day in Jamestown.  My boys went geocaching for the first time and had so much fun using the handheld GPS.

We met up with my husband's family and had a nice picnic in the park.

The kids all found a tree to climb in and had a ball.  We played a bit of football and some soccer too.

Through some sort of misunderstanding between my son and his uncle; my middle son was left unattended in the park at one point when we had left Alec in his care and went to go check out a local fort that Alec had no interest in seeing.

Luckily he was only left alone for a few minutes and was fine when I went back to get him but it threw quite a wrench into my day and made me hyper aware of where all three of my boys were for the rest of the day.

I debated about leaving but the boys were having so much fun and I didn't want to spoil the rest of the day for everyone else.

We headed to the beach area after that and all the kids had so much fun exploring the shore looking for crabs.  We climbed on the rocks, scoured three different areas of shore and found so much sea life!  The kids even found some non- stinging jellyfish to examine!

We saw tons of boats and ships, seagulls, a cormorant, spider crabs, hermit crabs, starfish, baby puffer fish and baby angel fish too.  Alec was really taken with the seaweed and kept pointing out different varieties to me.  All three boys went in the water (Alec pretty much just got his feet wet but that's still progress!).



Looking for our first geocache

We found it! 

Alec didn't want to get down afterwards!  He loves trees!

Looking for crabs in the rocks

one type of seaweed

Alec was fascinated by the "pods" on the end of
this species of seaweed

Out bucket of crabs.  We had to let some go; the large crabs were
eating some of the smaller crabs! 

Found another one!

This man showed us the shrimp he caught

As well as baby puffer fish and angelfish

Alec was checking out the different textures
of the seaweed too

Another species he found

"and look at this one!"

Feeling the crab's shell; it was sort of spongy and not hard



An injured starfish we found.  Turning it over we noticed all
the little feelers moving so we knew it was still alive

He put his toes in the water!

Checking on our crabs

Alec made friends with a little dog and his owner. 

Hiking down to check out beach #2

Love all the beautiful sailboats that we saw out yesterday

"Hey, look- I'm surfing!"

Jellyfish at the third beach we checked out. 

We headed to Point Judith for dinner and sat on the rocks watching the boats and jet skis go by.  We waved to the big ferries and got splashed a bit.  We saw all the fishing boats moored for the night awaiting another's day fishing.  We watched the seagulls swoop in and steal some of our food and enjoyed watching the sunset over the water.

our "restaurant"



Waving to the ferry

The fishing boats

Linking Up With: