BEACH?

We have been quite lucky with the weather this summer. It wasn't horribly cold and wasn't horribly hot (although I'd love me some heat for a few days!!..too late now). Anyway, most of the days, the kids were so happy just playing outside loads. A few new families moved onto our street, so they have been making new friends, playing Four Square non-stop, mixed in with football and basketball. Katya and the girls have made an awesome club house inside one of the sheds in the neighbors yard, complete with lights, bean bags and curtains. 

But I got distracted.

So one day we decided to get a few friends together and drive to the beach an hour and half north of us, near Hunstanton. 

And apparently, everyone else in England decided to do the same. It wasn't even a weekend! 

Anyway...maybe we should have left at 8 am, but it's quite unrealistic to ask our kids to wake up that early during summer holidays just to go to the beach. Our journey took FOREVER! Moreover...one of my friends who was a bit ahead of us got to the beach we had planned on going and saw that there was some sort of event going on so all the parking was taken. We quickly had to reroute everyone to another beach that I knew of-Holkham Reserve beach. That meant a bit more driving...but at least parking was good. The sad part--I had very few coins to pay for parking, thus had to settle for only TWO hours. Two hours! Seriously! By the time we unloaded a car and started our ONE MILE journey to the beach (not kidding...this is that beach that has such a long walk from the parking lot to the sea). Through the mud, through the sand, through the streams...with all our beach gear. It was only fun because all the kids were doing it with friends-hahahaha. 

Yes, the beach is gorgeous and seems so empty even though we know that hundreds of people are wondering around along the shore. But it wasn't even warm! Mika was like, "Ummmm....this is a good day for a beach? Are you sure?". Poor guy. He just spent two weeks in Turkey with warm seas and non-stop sun. Little did he understand that THIS is our British summer, my friend:). We've got to take what we can get, and if it's only in the 70s, that's pretty darn hot:))). 

See? These crazies learnt their lesson in the last three years. It's swimsuit time!

And we only stayed for TWO hours. Yeah...my parking money was running out, plus we had to get home in time to go to the Tholstroms' house for a dental get together. Wish we could have stayed longer...Basically almost 5 hours driving for 2 hours on the beach. Not a very great ratio. On the way back, we lucked out with traffic at least. 

To be honest, I cannot wait till we get to go to an actual HOT beach.

Lyana.