Events of Friday, December 31, 2010

            When I woke up this morning by the seashore, I heard the heater running in my room. Since I was so sleepy, it took me a while to realize that it was actually the heater, not the ocean, I was hearing. I looked down from my top bunk bed and saw Caitlin and Lindsey twiddling their thumbs. I knew we were all thinking the same thought; how these beds were so comfortable and there was no point in getting out of these warm beds when we weren’t being forced to wake up and get going. Our serene peace did not last long. Soon a cheery Mom burst into our room, saying, “We are at the beach. Time for breakfast.” Isn’t that just what a sleepy teenager wanted to hear?

            We lumbered out of bed, not bothering to make them, for one reason: we heard and smelled bacon sizzling. We helped Dad finish breakfast and then sat down to a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs. During breakfast, Mom laid out our plans for the day. Dad was going to take the RV to get its oil changed while we caught up on blogs, postcards, laundry, and whatever else we needed to do. While she was doing this, I spotted a real pelican, like in Finding Nemo, gracefully coasting down the canal. This really excited me. I can’t remember ever seeing these beautiful birds before and they really fascinated me. I jumped up, almost upsetting the table, screaming, “A PELICAN! A PELICAN! A PELICAN!” By the end of the day, I would have seen 95 of these birds, on the beach, by the canal, and “dive-bombing”, as I call it. When the pelican wants to land in the water, he quickly goes hurtling down with a big splash. It seriously looks like he is dive bombing. Anyway, we finished breakfast and showered while Daddy went and got the oil changed and bought groceries. While he was gone we caught up on our blogs, emails, pictures, and schoolwork. He came back around lunch time, with an armful of groceries.

            For lunch, we took advantage of the toaster and microwave and cooked ourselves a hot lunch, with everything from lasagna to split pea and ham soup, and bacon quesadillas to steamed broccoli. This is NOT a lunch we can have in the RV. It was very yummy, and after clean-up, we all went our own way. I read and wrote postcards while Dad and Mom planned for the rest of our trip. Caitlin made tuna salad, and Lindsey made apple crisp. In the RV, the small oven and the lack of a top heating coil in our oven, causes us to have more apple mush than apple crisp. Apple mush is yummy in its own way, and apple crisp is too. So, since we now have a good oven in this house, we took advantage of it and made apple crisp... actually crisp.

            Since we were by the seashore, we decided to take a walk on the beach next. Mom told us that we should each have one beach outfit that we would wear every time we went to the beach to keep down on the amount of sand tracked everywhere. We chose our beach outfits, donned our sunglasses, and headed to the beach. We were literally a block away from the ocean. What we found on the beach was a beautiful sunset and a treasure chest of shells. Dad gave us a limit of two shells per person. I decided that I wanted to find one of those shells that you can hear the ocean in (I think they’re called conch shells) and maybe a sand dollar or anything else interesting. We took off our shoes and walked barefoot on the sand, although we weren’t allowed in the ocean, because it was freezing cold. Lindsey busied herself with shells while I skipped along the waves, swinging my shoes. Mom and Dad went on their own little private walk and Caitlin and Ben did their own thing. All too soon, it was time to go home for dinner. On the way home, we noticed a group of 18 pelicans flying by the red setting sun reflecting on the ocean. It was really pretty!

            Once home, Mom and the kids quickly prepared a taco dinner. We finished dinner at the same time the apple crisp finished cooking,  but our parents said it needed to cool, so we began to watch the movie Independence Day. Excited by this adventure story about aliens attacking the earth, we were all disappointed when Mom stopped it to eat dessert. But we weren’t sad for long, because this apple crisp was CRISP! The crisp was golden and crunchy, and we enjoyed it immensely. After dessert, we cleared the table and went back to our movie.

            When the movie was finished, we all went to bed, but we didn’t go to sleep easily, because the sound of New Year’s Eve fireworks kept us up. Because of these fireworks, I might have been awake when it turned to 2011, but I was too sleepy to notice.