When I was growing up, my grandparents had an amazing house on Captiva Island in Florida. Until I was 15 (when they decided to sell the house), we spent this week of April (the school vacation week) at the beach. I have only good memories. The ocean is the one place I would happily pack us up and fly to for a vacation. But since that's not exactly possible for us to do, we took advantage of Saturday's 80° weather, and decided to bring the beach to us.
The combination of our sandbox and a 10 gallon bin of water provided hours of entertainment for Lukas, Jasper and Zeben, as well as a couple of kids from the neighborhood.
The main goal seemed to be to get the water from the bin into the sandbox as quickly as possible. At first I was resistant to this game, and encouraged them to water the flowers and plants instead. But eventually I surrendered, reasoning that clearly the sand would dry out soon enough, and that we weren't wasting too much water.
Even Zeben clearly understood the older kids' plan, and happily joined in the fun.
All in all, it was about as close to an island vacation as we can get at this point, and it was a surprisingly satisfying alternative. I imagined I could hear the sound of waves crashing in the background as I relaxed in the sun and took in the joy of five sandy and squealing kids.
When I was growing up, my grandparents had an amazing house on Captiva Island in Florida. Until I was 15 (when they decided to sell the house), we spent this week of April (the school vacation week) at the beach. I have only good memories. The ocean is the one place I would happily pack us up and fly to for a vacation. But since that's not exactly possible for us to do, we took advantage of Saturday's 80° weather, and decided to bring the beach to us.
The combination of our sandbox and a 10 gallon bin of water provided hours of entertainment for Lukas, Jasper and Zeben, as well as a couple of kids from the neighborhood.
The main goal seemed to be to get the water from the bin into the sandbox as quickly as possible. At first I was resistant to this game, and encouraged them to water the flowers and plants instead. But eventually I surrendered, reasoning that clearly the sand would dry out soon enough, and that we weren't wasting too much water.
Even Zeben clearly understood the older kids' plan, and happily joined in the fun.
All in all, it was about as close to an island vacation as we can get at this point, and it was a surprisingly satisfying alternative. I imagined I could hear the sound of waves crashing in the background as I relaxed in the sun and took in the joy of five sandy and squealing kids.
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