We had a week off-ish, so we booked a site on Mustang Island on the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi. It was quite an adventure!

It was too cold for bathing suits at first, so we explored warmly.

No idea.

One of these days I’m going to go through the entire Travel Bags website and see how many pictures there are of Marissa (red shirt) with one foot in the air. It’s her trademark.

We loved the wildlife here. The great blue herons make the beach their home.

Pelicans flocked overhead several times a day—it was fascinating.

Sometimes they land, apparently.

Barnacles…or something that maybe isn’t a barnacle…but barnacles is such a cool word, I’ve been waiting most of my life to use it. Barnacles. Whee!

Plus there are the…wait…what is that?

No way.

Yes way.

It’s a Portuguese Man o’ War.

Their long tentacles sting, and can kill you. They don’t always kill you, but they hurt like…something that hurts a lot…and if you go into shock from it, you could be toast. At least they were nice and big so we could see them and avoid them. No touchy!

Sorry, Hannah, no pets that can kill us.

Fine, I’ll throw him back. Bye, Squishy!

Sorry, Ems, no souvenirs taller than your brother.

One great aspect of this beach is that we could drive the Bagabus onto the sand and set up our chairs right there.

Considering our lifestyles, that was pretty much like parking half of a house on the beach. Cool, eh? Ellie thinks so.

When it warmed up enough to throw on our bathing suits and head into the water, that’s just what we did.

Having inherited half their mother’s Wisconsin blood, the kids have fun playing in water that is not-altogether-uncold. Apparently, most people don’t like not-altogether-uncold, because we had the beach pretty much to ourselves…or maybe they knew something about this beach that we didn’t.

Despite the Wisconsin blood, little Ellie is still a wild west desert baby and got a little chilly.

Remember how I said we didn’t touch the Portuguese Man o’ Wars? Well, one of us didn’t get the memo.

Oh look. A pretty blue blob.

It looks nothing like anything my trustworthy family has ever fed me before, and my trustworthy family told me to leave it, so I’m going to EAT IT!

Good grief, Jedi. He’s fine…ish. But seriously…eat it? Okay, so he didn’t eat it eat it. He only tasted it. But still. Blech.

I’m so ashamed.

Aaaaaannnnnnd that’s why you’re supposed to keep your dog on a six-foot leash. ‘Nuf said.

On another note, did you ever hear the story of the seven-year-old boy with cheese puffs who was attacked by seagulls?

Neither did we.

Epic fail.

Whoa. Random dog.

He should be on a six-foot leash. Ahem.

On our second swimming day Hannah and Marissa were way out there…

when we realized that the occasional giant Portuguese Man o’ War we had been seeing had “reproduced” over night into hundreds of little tiny PMoWs that were difficult to see. They were everywhere!  Everybody out of the water! STAT!

No problem! We can have fun at the beach without water! See?

The Sand Castle Competition

• Team 1: Hannah—her team’s vision was to create a Medieval village.
• Team 2: Everybody else—this team’s vision was to make a huge pile of sand and try to make it look like a sand castle.

And go!

Takin’ a breather.

You call that a sand castle? Finesse, people! Finesse.

Oh never mind, you amateurs…

I’m so outta here.

And the results were…a tie!

Hannah’s Medieval sand village.

Everybody else’s sand castle.

It was a beautiful (although exhausting) week, not only because of the beach and celebrating God’s creation, but also because of Easter, and celebrating God’s salvation.