Matagorda 2011

Day 1: Taking it all in.

That crab!

The waves, the wind.  Can't. Stay. Awake.

Gigi and me

Let the bed jumping begin!

From our deck you can see and hear the ocean!

Relaxing after a long day at the beach

Here I come, Uncle John!

Napping again.

Of course, Ariel was at the beach, because, "You know Mermaids live in the ocean."

Sand chair.   That's not my beer.

Mom and Aunt Rachel in the 80s

This year we celebrated Memorial Day in a very special way: we took our first trip to Matagorda.  Now this is the beach where not only Mom grew up visiting, but so did Popo.  Our family has been going here since the 1960s.  When Mom was little, her Mimi and Popo Vogt had a beach house here and they would go every summer and she says some of her best childhood memories were in Matagorda, so we decided it was time we take her back there.  Friday Mom, Dad, Luke and I drove to Yoakum to pick up Gigi and Popo and head down to Matagorda where Uncle John was going to meet us.  As soon as we got there, we went straight to the beach.  It was Luke's first trip to the beach so it was fun to see his face when he saw the ocean and all of the sand.  Apparently the beach was the most relaxing place he had ever been, because he could not stay awake when we were there.  I, on the other hand, was so excited I could barely see straight. First of all, the beach house had a room with 6 beds lined up and they were just asking for me to jump from bed to bed to bed, so I spent quite a bit of time doing that.  Then when we made it to the beach I just wanted to jump into the waves and Uncle John played some pretty fun jump into the waves games with me.  Then, Dad halted all of our merriment by catching a crab from the ocean and showing it to me.  Yeah, it was cool, but I was not interested in going back in the water that day, so I honed my sandcastle-making skills. (Don't worry-by the next day, I was back in the water running and splashing and saying, "I'm screaming because I am so excited to be at the beach!")  So for three days, we splashed in the water, built sandcastles, took outside showers (very cool) and had a fun time playing on the beach where my Mom, Uncle John, Aunt Rachel and their cousins and Popo played when they were little.  What a perfect weekend at the beach.