Sandcastles R Us

So last night, I was working on a post. Almost an hour later, I was 98% finished when the computer shut down on me. No, it didn’t save all my hard work. I threw my hand up in the air and called it a night and went to bed. So, this is my second attempt to write this.

About a month ago, Ginger, my cousin called up my mother and asked her if she and my family wanted to come up to Jetty Island for a sand castle building contest. I said sure! Knowing that we’ve never built a “real” sandcastle.

So the day comes and we get in line to go over on the ferry. The children went ahead of us on the ferry and by the time we got there, they had already settled into a nice routine.

Here is Erik and Callie burying Kathryn in the sand.

Erik, not wanting to be outdone wanted to get buried too.

Uncle Benjamin and cousin Jacob quickly went to work getting Erik in the sand. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a swim top, so he was covered in sand. BIG TIME.

Lauren loves herself some seaweed. There was plenty there to be had

Emma and Mariah got into it.

Here is Mariah getting ready for the competition. She is practicing how to make trees. It takes lots of water.

In the midst of all of this, Ginger and I sat down to talk about what we would build. Benjamin wanted to make a Wal-Mart. Ummmm, NO. So he built one all by himself.

He’s trying to level the ground.

He did finish, but since it was so small, it didn’t last. Plus the little kids came and stood on it and it crumbled to the ground. Let’s take a minute of silence to notate this momentous occasion.

*wiping a tear away*

Ok, done now. .

So we went through a couple of different ideas. I didn’t want to do some sea creatures. Yeah, everyone does that. I didn’t want to do a sandcastle. Sheesh, that’s original. NOT. Ginger wanted to do spaghetti. I didn’t know how we were going to do the noodles. So we decided on an ice cream sundae.

About this time, a guy walks into a spot with some pretty good tools. I looked at Ginger and said “We’re screwed.” She just laughed. We had three hours to complete our creation and we couldn’t bring anything from out of the square. We were only allowed to use what was in our square. Drat's! That meant we couldn’t bring more sand into our square.

Now, I don’t have any pictures. I was too busy bossing everyone around and telling them what to do. Oh, and once in a while, I put my hands down and helped mold the sand. I had great visions of what it was going to look like. (yes, you all may start gagging now)

In the middle of all of this, Kathryn and Callie wanted to participate and make their own. Now, Ginger’s younger girls’ are the same age as mine. In fact, they get along great and are good friends. We are really lucky in that regard. Here are some pictures of Callie and Kathryn’s creation.

And, here are some pictures of ours:

 

Ken is very serious about this. In fact, he named our boat. Ladies and Gentleman, may I introduce to you the Minow.

Minow? Um, I think he meant to say the Minnow.

Yeah, that looks much better. Don’t mind Ken, we’d been out in the sun for over 3 hours at this point.

This was some of our competition:

This was the guy who brought all of his tools. Yes, that is three hours after and 10 minutes left in the competition. I felt better all of a sudden…

This was ours with 10 minutes left.

A real sand castle.

Believe it or not, these ladies took first place. Yes, I agree with you, ours was better.

Ours? Took second place:

The Minow Minnow.

Third place? The Ukulele.

We will go back in a year. AND, we will take FIRST PLACE.

Question of the day: Will you join us next year at Jetty Island?