Part IV

Monday night into Tuesday morning, we had a heck of a storm roll into town. The wind was kicking up pretty hard, almost felt like the house was rocking ... either that, or someone was doing some laundry downstairs. *giggles* The sun did end up coming out on Tuesday, but it was still pretty windy. We had our own walkway down to the beach in the backyard, and we could see that the water was a lot closer to the house than it was in the previous days. Amy decided to walk out to get a closer look, and to her surprise ... part of the steps down to the beach were gone. Yup, they were there the night before and now they're in pieces lying on the beach.

One by one, pretty much everyone had to see this and take pictures, and I'm glad to say we were no exception. I took the girls out as far as Rachel would let me, as the walkway felt kinda rickety in addition to being destroyed. We took some pictures of each other, and Amy took one of all 4 of us, since Lindsay was inside drinking heavily.

I took Allison and Ryleigh out front to play in the sand of the volleyball court, while Ben, Andrew, Thad, Rachie Ann and I threw around a baseball. The wind was still blowing pretty hard, and that was playing havoc with the flight-path of the baseball, but it was still fun. I was getting bored chasing the ball into the overgrowth, so we had a pickup game of basketball. Chris came out, and made the teams an even 3 on 3 match. Rachie Ann, Ben and I took on Thad, Andrew, and Chris - it was a pretty evenly matched game, and I was impressed by Rachie's skills on the court. Mom even popped out to tape the game - - she tapes everything these days, and especially the week of the reunion.

If you look closely, at the picture of the house, you can see Mom up there playing Alan Funt, and Rachel was able to zoom in on our camera for the shot on the right. Rachel and Amy went down to the public beach landing, and found that the water was right up to the landing, so the beach was pretty much closed. They also found a condemned house on the beach, so if any of you are looking for a cheap place to stay - I can hook you up, if you don't mind the possibility of a house collapsing on you at some point of your stay that is. Since the beach was closed, the kids were playing in the sand of the volleyball court. All was well, until the battle over the shovels started and we had to take kids inside.


On a side note, the house next to ours is a duplex. One side is a rental property (that's also for sale), but the other side is a private residence. We were tossing the baseball around, and I noticed that they older couple were taking their dog for a walk. I didn't pay too much attention, until Ben kinda motioned for me to look to my right, and there's the old guy coming up to me in his attractive dark socks, shorts and tennis shoe ensemble. He basically told me to be careful when I went into the brush to look for the baseball, as the ticks are a problem. He walked off with his wife, I rolled my eyes and made a partially obscene hand gesture and went back to playing. Later, I was picking up the ball to throw back to Ben - and I noticed that sure enough, there's a tick crawling on the seams. I killed the sucker, and got the kids inside. We all checked for ticks, and Rachie Ann found one on her. So, Sorry Old dude for the Hand Gesture .... My Bad, Yo.

Love to all.