"Beach Week"

A relaxing week at the beach is only two days away! Every year, since before I was even born, my family has taken a week long vacation to the beach. When I say family, I mean everyone on my mom's side: parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, EVERYONE! It is absolutely so much fun that I look forward to it every year. The only bad part is that Brian is never able to go because of baseball. So I end up missing him during that week and wishing he were there to share in all the fun. One day he'll be able to come though!

I fly to Columbia on Friday (tomorrow), and we leave for the beach Saturday morning. I've already gotten my "base tan" so I don't get fried on the first day. (My host family has a pool that Brian and I have found quite enjoyable!) I looked at the weather forcast for the beaches of SC, and unfortunately we may not have much sunshine. Every day they're calling for scattered thunderstorms, but I'm sure we'll get some nice sunny weather at some point! In any case, it will be nice just to be with my family that I haven't seen in 5 months!

Every year at the beach is different, but there are some things that we always seem to do. Maybe because of tradition, but mostly because they're fun. For instance, if there's a thunderstorm, we love to go out on the covered porch and watch it as comes in, or goes out across the ocean. There's also always a golf outing, a good card game, and crabbing (one of my personal favorites). I love it when we catch really big ones! One year we caught so many that we kept them and made crab dip. I don't think we'll do that again because shelling all of those crabs was tedious! Anyway, of course we do the standard beach activites like riding waves, searching for sharks teeth, and going out to eat for good seafood too. When I was little we would always go to a small waterpark. I think my favorite one closed down a few years ago. I'm going to check on that when I'm down there this year, because if it's open, I'll be trying to talk some people into going with me!

On a completely different subject, I've neglected to give the Redhawks trainer, Jake Fish, or "Fish" as we call him, proper credit in previous entries. He's done a great job helping Brian recover from his strained biceps tendon. So Fish, here's to you buddy! No more leaving you out on my blog entries.