Raindrops falling on our head

Today was the first day of camp for PB. I drove her down this morning, and less than 13 minutes after arriving, I was done with the sign in, and heading off without her. I miss her, but I'm sure she will be having a great time and making new friends this week. And there will be time for her to work with her feelings about her father leaving in less than 2 months.

Since he is leaving in less than 2 months, and Bug just returned home, we're trying to take advantage of the time we have before school starts. So, while I was driving down and delivering PB, DDS loaded up the jeep with all the crap we need to go to the beach. Seriously, small armys don't need this much stuff, but we've try going without some of it, and it just doesn't work. There's the sand toys, the boogie boards, the chairs, the umbrella, the cooler, the tackle box and fishing poles, the Monster's life vest, towels, dry clothes to ride home in, sunscreen...I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Luckily, we have a rack for the back of the jeep. This helps with space.

So, I called when I dropped PB off, and we agreed that we would meet and park the car, load all of us up into the jeep, and head off to the beach. I killed a little time, and we met up. We headed to the closest beach, about 3-4 miles away, and as we were heading along, we noticed the really dark cloud behind us. DDS checked the weather before he left home, and it simply had the 10-20% chance of rain that it always has in the summer. Apparently, today that was actually true. We pulled into the parking lot of the pier, quickly threw on the top just before the rain started. We sat in the jeep eating our lunch, and the heavens dumped. Not just rain and lightening, but hail the size of marbles. At one point it looked like someone had dumped several boxes of mothballs in the parking lot. We sat there for about 30 minutes, just amazed at the strength of this storm. It didn't seem to be slowing down, so we headed back to the car. Once we get the car, the sky clears up and the sun shines down. We take the car to park it closer to the beach, load into the jeep again, and head for the water. We pass a nice little family of deer, and I'm mad that I didn't have my camera close enough. I could almost reach out and touch them. Finally, we drive up on the beach, and it's almost empty. Of course, that might have been because of the weather...the fact that it was only about 75 degrees and a steady wind. Not a breeze, but a wind. We managed to deal with it for a couple of hours. Monster enjoyed the sand and the freedom to just run around whooping and hollering. DDS enjoyed the sun and fishing, and Bug and I got to read our books. It was good.

We headed home, stopping for dinner and managing to avoid the traffic. Now I'm tired and heading off to bed.