Epiphany on the Beach

It is Epiphany. Imogen, Charlotte, Gemma-Rose and I are all sitting in Mum and Dad's room talking.

"We have two options on what we could do today," Mum says. "We could stay home and have cake or we could go to the beach?"

What is Mum thinking? Of course we want to go to the beach. We grab our swimmers, towels, something to do in the car and water bottles.

Soon we are in the car. I settle down for the long drive. I have a favourite book on the go and I am listening to the Frozen soundtrack on my MP3 player. It doesn't seem to take very long before we arrive.

Immy

We head over to the changing rooms. We all change as fast as we can, put on our sunscreen and then meet Dad outside.

He leads us over to the beach and to a good spot on the sand.

"Can we go play in the water?" Gemma-Rose asks.

Me

"Come on," Imogen agrees and we run into the waves. The water isn't half as cold as we thought it would be and soon we are jumping waves. We call ourselves the Ninja Kipper Fish.

Gemma-Rose and Charlotte keep getting carried back to shore, but Imogen and I soon pick up how to jump a wave and then dig our heels into the sand.

After a little while we all decide to go make a sand castle. It is a tradition to make a sand castle every time we go to the beach.

"What should this one be like?" Charlotte asks.

"How about we give it two towers?" Imogen suggests.

"We could give it a tunnel all the way through," Charlotte adds.

"Come on then."

Soon we are digging and piling sand up. It is looking really impressive. I smile as I look at our handiwork.

"Lets call it the Two Towers," Imogen says. I giggle.

Gemma-Rose and Two Towers

"What should we do now?" Gemma-Rose asks.

"Well I have seen all these amazing pictures of sand mermaids. Does anyone want to try making one?" Imogen asks.

We all do. We have never made a sand mermaid before.

Charlotte and Imogen start by drawing out the shape and then we begin on the building.

The mermaid

"Try to stay in the lines," Charlotte calls.

It is a lot of fun. I get given the head to do. I build it a bit out of shape and Charlotte has to fix it for me. She and Imogen are good at doing things like this.

Mum comes over to have a look. She is soon off for her camera. She takes photos of everyone and, when we are finished, the mermaid itself. Dad comes over too. He takes the camera and takes a lot more photos. It is the most amazing thing we have ever done!

"Time to go and get some dinner," Mum says.

We go to the change room and have showers and get back into our clothes. We are all hungry and so we hurry. Dad is going to buy fish and chips.

Once he has bought them, we find a park and sit down to eat our dinner. Seagulls crowd around in hope of something to eat, but they are out of luck. We are too hungry to waste anything on birds.

When we have finished eating, we climb back in the car and go home to bed. It was a great day! I really enjoyed myself.

What did you do on the Feast of the Epiphany?

Beach

I love the beach. It is so much fun to play in the sand and splash in the water. Do you like the beach?

One of my favourite things to do at the beach is to make a sand castle. I like piling sand up and then digging around the castle to make a moat. Imogen makes the best sand castles ever. Someday I am going to be as good as she is at it though.

We don't get to go to the beach very often. We live a long way away, but that just makes going to the beach more special. Can you imagine going to the beach everyday? It would not be very special after a bit.

Each time we go to the beach we come home again with huge buckets of shells. They are always so pretty. I love shells. Shell hunting is a lot of fun. Shells also look good on sand castles.

I love having picnics on the beach. Ham rolls with potato salad seasoned with sand, yum. Well not the sand bit, but it adds a bit of extra flavour. What do you think?

I like to take photos at the beach, but I don't get very many. I am still trying to get a good one though. Can you take good photos at the beach?

All in all the beach is a very fun place, but I think that I would not like to go everyday, it would not be so special and fun.

We're Going on Holiday

We're going on a beach holiday. Mum's has booked a lovely beach cottage by 'Swan Lake.' The cottage is called 'Swan Lake Cottage'. Four years ago we went on another beach holiday.

"Swan Lake Cottage" has three bedrooms. They all have queen beds. One bedrooms bunk beds as well. On our last holiday there were four bedrooms, with two queen beds, one set of bunks, and three single beds. The house was much bigger with two storeys, three bathrooms, and two living areas. this house is small and cosy.

"Swan Lake Cottage comes with six bikes and a canoe. I want to learn how to canoe. Dad knows how to canoe so maybe he'll help me. On our last holiday the boys went kayaking.

"Swan Lake' has black swans living round it. It's right next to the sea. In spring, whales and dolphins come to the coast. There's no jellyfish in the lake. There's really nice sand and the water is shallow and clear, just right for swimming.

I'm so excited about this holiday. I'm looking forwards to learning how to canoe, sleeping in a queen sized be with Gemma-Rose, and buying souvenirs. I'm going to take lots of photos and write a diary every day.

After our last beach holiday we made a scrapbook of all our diary pages, postcards, photos, and stamps. For this holiday we want to do the same.