West Beach, Galveston

The bridge over the dunes


Zoey and Olivia run to get more water


The beach at sunset

My parents rented a beach house last week and we all went down for a little vacation. Yes, Trey went too! Zoey and I went down on Tuesday and had a nice, mellow time playing in the water and just hanging out. She loved the beach, was fascinated with the waves and enjoyed digging in the sand. The water was actually quite lovely while we were there, which, for those of you that don't know, was pretty fortunate. Galveston water is kind of a crap shoot. Sometimes it's smooth and pretty clear, but oftentimes it's a muddy and uninspiring brown. That week, there were only small waves, more like a lake than the ocean (er, gulf). And once you got past the really shallow part, it was a decent greenish-blue. Of course, while Zoey did enjoy getting in the water, she didn't go very far out at all. In fact, one of the most exciting things to her was that she could experience the waves without it getting deep (so she couldn't "fall in the water"). She spent an awful lot of time playing in the sand though. Can I just say, while sand is nice, I get a little sick of it being everywhere, and getting into every part of your body. You can't come back from the beach without rinsing all the sand that's oozed its way into your bathing suit. Luckily, there was a decent outdoor shower at the beach house, and an even more convenient garden hose, which worked exceptionally well on little kids. I think some of the kids that came to visit us (Olivia and family, Zoey's cousins) had as much fun after the beach playing with the water hose and shower as they did on the actual beach--which is good, because it's just not fun coming up with creative ways to convince kids that it would be good to go back to the beach house.

Trey came down late Thursday, and on Friday he took me fishing off a pier for the first time since I got pregnant. I had a blast staying up all night throwing out line after line, even though we only caught small trout that we had to unhook and toss back into the water. I did luck into catching one decent sized flounder, which we kept and my mom cooked (deliciously). But other than that, just small trout, which, if you've ever been fishing, is much better than catching nothing. At least you get the thrill of the catch. Honestly, that's all Trey really fishes for these days anyway, as he generally practices catch and release. He used to bring home fish, but had to stop when we found ourselves with a freezer full of fish and no more stomach for them. I do enjoy fishing, though, and wish I could do more of it. He says he'll teach me to go out in the kayak, but we haven't been able to find the time to do it yet (and besides, it's super hot out there).

Speaking of heat, it kind of cracked me up when I was watching the Weather Channel and they were talking about the deadly heat wave. No, I'm not laughing about anyone's death. That's always awful. But the weather person (or maybe just one of the stiff looking ladies that deliver that information) made a comment about how the heat was going to be just dreadful this next week, "rising up to the 95-100 degree range." Again, it's not funny when it gets really hot in places where they don't have AC in every building, but 95-100 degrees is just summer in Texas, and summer lasts at least 5 months here. It should be a good summer for the AC industry folks. And the energy companies.

In any case, I did take lots of pictures at the beach. I don't think they're particularly great, but here's a link to them. We spent one afternoon at Moody Gardens, but mostly we just hung out. It was very relaxing.

Cheesy Zoey video

So, my new HP computer comes with this cheesy program called Muvee Maker. All you have to do is import your pictures or video, choose a song, and it does the rest for you. The results are pretty cheesy--but I made one anyway. And now I'm going to share it with you:

Zoey Muvee!

Our fourth was pretty uneventful. Zoey had a playdate with her friend from school, which she enjoyed very much. They swam and played with all of his toys for about four hours. After which we came home and just hung out until Trey got home. We had thought about taking Z to see some fireworks, but it started raining so we watched some on TV. Fortunately, we had seen some from our backyard that Sunday night--which, really, was enough for us. I'm still looking forward to the day when I can take Z to see some fireworks and watch her stare up in the sky in awe and amazement. Maybe next year.

Zoey loves to get in the pool, any pool, but after about a week of swimming class, she's become a little afraid of the water. She still loves to go in, but now she prefers to sit on the steps--she doesn't even want me to carry her around the pool. No thank you. It took me a little while to figure out that one day in swim class, she put her head under water, either accidently or on purpose, and it frightened her. She "fell into the water," she says. And since then, she's only been to one swim class.

Ever since I've discovered this new phobia, I've begun taking her to swim as often as possible. We've been to a few neighborhood park pools, and I really like the one that's right around the corner. It's L-shaped, and the short end of the "L" is a 2 foot-deep wading pool. But the best thing about it, is that its stairs run all along one side. There's about 15 feet of stairs--it's perfect for a kid who only likes to stay on the stairs! Still, the idea I have is to keep her around pools until she gets over her fear of "falling in the water," and starts going back to swim class. It hasn't happened yet.

We're going to spend a week in Galveston this month, as my folks have rented a nice beach house there. While I'm not the biggest beach fan, I'm sure Zoey's going to have a blast. Plus, we'll get to experiment with letting her spend the night at her aunt's and/or granny's house. I'm hoping she'll do fine, and we can start letting her spend more time with them (and them her).

I've been taking a lot of pictures lately, working on things like composition and depth of field and such. It's about the only creative thing going right now. I still mainly take snapshots of people (mostly Zoey), but I've enjoyed taking my camera to some events and getting some nice shots of the people there. You can check out some new galleries on my smugmug site. If you're feeling motivated, you can even leave comments on some of the pictures to let me know if you like them or not, or if you think they could be better--after all, I know a lot of good photographers read this blog. Well, not a lot, but I know there are some out there.