Save the Castle!!

July 28th our family went to the Neptune Beach for some family fun time. Matt and Jeff didn't get to go though because they had to work. It was in the 100's too. Poor guys lol.

My dad got the day off and we picked up Andrea then met Jason and his family there. It was really cold there because it was really windy. But, that's to be expected at beaches in Oregon. Which are actually more like coasts.

Justin with his awesome sun glasses.

We made lunch pretty much after we set everything up. While lunch was being made, my dad, Ben, and Jason walked over to these caves and took some pictures.

Andrea and I saw Jason and Ben in that pose and wondered what in the world they were doing. I guess my dad took a picture of a really big rock and was going to add it in this picture to look like the boys are holding it. My dad didn't edit the picture yet but I'll just show you their pose cause it looks funny without the rock, haha.

From inside the cave.

Then they came back and we ate lunch.

He's holding chocolate chip cookies. He did have a bag of animal circus cookies but the wind blew the bag and almost all of the cookies fell onto the ground, lol.

I took some videos but all you can hear is the strong wind. So I muted it and added a song to it. I think some of the clips are choppy and I'm not sure why.

We went to the water after lunch to see how cold it was. It was realllly cold and hurt our feet.

We're making those faces cause the water is cold.

I took this stick and wrote a message to Matt. I wrote, "Chum Matt!" which is kind of like saying, "you're a chump" it's not in a bad way, we're joking around. Andrea sent this picture to Matt on her phone.

Then I tried to draw an anime person in the sand but it's hard to see. She looks like a Chinese person, if you can see her.

After that I drew out the game "tic tac toe" but for some reason was having trouble drawing out the lines. I would either make the lines too small or too squished. So Jason just drew it out and him and Ben played. I think they had a draw on the first game, then Jason won the second game.

My mom brought a kite. Her, Nichole, and Stephanie were playing with it for a little while.

(In the picture is my mom and Jason watching her)

My dad was blocking the wind by putting a towel over Justin.

Us kids wanted to build a sand castle with a moat. We used to always build a moat when we were younger. It is a lot of fun!

Jason, Ben, and I started it first, then Andrea joined us. Stephanie was building her own castle and my mom was helping her.

While building the moat, either Ben or Jason found a little stick and we called it our castle and had to protect it. So we put the stick on a pile of sand and built walls around it with a moat.

One person (usually Andrea or Jason) would shovel a bunch of sand then the other two people (usually Ben and I) would take the sand and make the walls. Or someone would work on the moat. I took a turn shoveling and I accidentally got my toe on my left foot. Now there's a red line on my toe, lol.

We worked on this for about 2 hours straight. It was kind of tiring, but way fun. Everytime the water would ruin the castle we'd yell, "save the castle!!" That was our first priority.

There were also these two boys building a castle next to us and they'd copy us. They'd yell the same thing, and Jason would tell us when water would come in a monotone voice, then the boys copied that too. All Jason would say was, "WATER." They started helping us a little too, they would help with our walls and get the water out of our moat, and inform us when the water was coming.

2 hours later we finished our castle and were tired. We got a little hot doing that so Andrea, Ben, and I got in our bathing suits and went out into the water. That cooled us right off and we didn't even get in the water all the way. It only got up to our stomachs.

It was too cold to stay in a while so we got out but went to a part of the beach where it had warmer water. It did feel warmer and didn't hurt our feet, but we were already cold from the other water so we didn't swim. Well actually, Andrea went back to get dried off but Ben and I stayed in the warmer water and found some little rapids. They were so lame they shouldn't even be considered rapids. But I wanted to try going down them so I did and got almost all wet. Then Ben came in and there was a little area where we could sit and it was up to almost my shoulders. It was kind of fun just sitting there and this couple walked by and probably thought we were crazy. The woman was like, "aren't you guys cold??" I was like, "yeah...but it's kind of fun" then she walked away laughing. A breeze came up and Ben and I both said at the same time, "I'm getting out!" cause it felt really cold with the breeze. So we went back and got dried off then had dinner. Jason and his family had already left so it was just my parents, Andrea, Ben, and I.

Three castles. The one closest to the picture is Stephanie's, the one on the right is the one the two boys built, then the one on the left that's closest to the water was the one we all built.

Ben built this little castle part of the time that we were building ours.

Closer look of our castle.

We packed up and got in the car.

Ben had found this rock that looks like a heart when him and I were sitting in the warmer water.

On the way home all three of us fell asleep. I was cold the entire way home even with a blanket on, but I had a lot of fun that day.