The Tangrens

The first thing Hyrum and Noah did upon reaching the beach house was to change into their swimsuits and life jackets and head to the beach. It was a daily destination for the rest of the vacation.

My Dad always wanted a boat when we were growing up. He said that if you live in Michigan with all of the lakes you needed to have a boat. So one birthday or something he got a boat. It was a blow up boat, but it was a boat and we had adventures on it. Once we lost one oar and broke another in the middle of a lake and had to use one broken oar and frantic hands to paddle against the wind to make it to the right shore. It ended up going to my sister’s house and she brought it up to the beach house to play in. Hyrum LOVES it. The first night they all hopped into it and ventured out into the surf. It scared Noah to death though. When he made it back up to the house I asked him if he had fun on the boat and he said “NO!” (like “How could you ever think that was fun?”) He was much more content to just dig in the sand.

And dump it on himself.

Derek spent nearly all of his time walking the boat around in the surf which earned him the nickname Gilligan, since he was only supposed to be on a three hour tour but ended up on the “island” for much, much longer. The first time Derek took Hyrum on the boat there were big waves and as he bounced around on them screamed “We’re gonna DIE!” ( a la Dash Incredible).

Where Derek earned the nickname of Gilligan, Nathan my brother in law earned the nickname of “The Hoff” as he loves to run across the beach and dive into the surf a la Baywatch. He and my nephew Ethan tried to pull my sister into the waves once but she was rescued by my niece.

The best thing about the beach at the beach house was that it was for all intents and purposes completely private. We almost never saw ANYONE out on the beach or in the surf the entire week we were there.

Several of the days at the beach included kites

My Dad has always loved kites and I have many memories of running as fast as my legs could carry me in an attempt to get a kite aloft. One day we had four of them (and could have had five if anyone would have brought the kite that my sister got for Hyrum down to the beach) flying at one time.

That was a first. There were of course a couple crossed lines and kites going down in neighbors trees but luckily they were also enjoying watching them and weren't upset about it.

Another beach favorite was burying in the sand. Noah still talks about wanting to go to the beach to bury Jaleigh in the sand.

There were all kinds of water works involved with this activity. ;)

The thing about living on the beach was the sand...everywhere. We kept a bucket of water by the door to try to wash off before going in the house. At first we'd send kids to the showers to rinse off, making good use of the hand towels

but eventually we decided that at the end of the day it was a beach house and although we tried to keep as much of it outside as we could we didn't panic if it didn't all stay outside.

One night we got back from the beach and Noah was looking for one of his cars. I asked him where it was and he said it was on the beach. I told him that we’d look for it tomorrow but that it was probably gone. Jaleigh said that she’d go with him so off they went together. It wasn’t until the homeward trip that we realized that an adult probably should have gone with them but when they got back safe and sound they also had the prodigal car.

One of the days we had a sand sculpture contest on the beach. We were divided into three teams and my parents were the judges. Our team consisted of Reagan, Jaleigh, Derek, Me, Noah and Elijah. We made a volcano and had a city called Noahland that was destroyed by Noah…uh I mean the volcano. We made Noahland so that he’d destroy it instead of the volcano. We got the teamwork award.

The others did a Cars roadway complete with a real car tire bridge

(they found the tire in the lake) and beach grass lining the roadway. They got the creativity award.

The third group made a big book about “Ohana” and put all kinds of sentimental things in it. They got the theme award because it conveyed the theme of the week.

The awards were rocks that my Dad had found.

There was also a near daily excursion down the beach to a place they named “the quarry” that had lot of rocks. The kids gathered so many rocks that they thought were cool. We had piles upon piles of rocks on our beach by the end, and altogether too many rocks in our luggage on the way home. Growing up my dad always had a cool rock collection. It is clear that he passed down his passion to the cousins.

My dad brought some plaster of paris and took the cousins to go do sand casting of wildlife tracks on the beach combined with Petoskey stones and seashells. I never ended up making any but they turned out really cool.

One night the cousins went down to the beach to set off some fireworks and light some sparklers. We hadn’t planned for the boys to go down but they were NOT going to be left out and had a blast sparkling on the beach.

The last night we were at the beach house, the night of the teenage slave labor, it was really warm and Derek was especially warm having run up and down the stairs 30 times so he and Ethan decided to go jump in the lake. I tagged along and provided the comic relief. We were running for the surf and I tripped and fell on my face a foot from the water. When we finally got in the water was perfect. Cool enough to be refreshing yet warm enough to want to stay there. What was amazing is that when we were wading out in the water we found a firefly floating in the water just blinking away. We hadn’t seen any fireflies the entire time we were there and on the last night we found one floating in the lake so we scooped him up and brought him back up to the house for Hyrum to see up close. It was soo cool. Since he was wet he didn’t fly away and we were able to put him in Hyrum’s bug container and we watched him blink awhile. That night as we were going to bed we saw another firefly on our window screen. I like to imagine it was a firefly mother coming to thank us for saving her son from the waves. Those were the only two fireflies we saw in Michigan.

It was both Noah and Elijah’s first time at the lake for real. Noah went to the beach once to take family pictures last October but it was so cold that we needed to wear our winter jackets…not an ideal day at the beach to be sure. He had to warm up to the beach, he wasn’t sure about the waves, they made him nervous but he warmed up to them too. Especially after Lightning McQueen came down to the beach.

He couldn’t get enough of that thing. It helped that the waves had calmed considerably.

Elijah loved the beach too. He wasn’t sure about the sand at first probably because it was pretty warm and neither was he very fond of the water…at first.

He by the next wave or two he’d warmed up to it considerably. For a long time we just sat on the edge of the surf waiting for waves to tickle our feet. Occasionally a big wave came and washed up on his chest. He got upset about that the first few times but warmed up to even that! After I’d taken enough pictures I went back to the beach shade tent and he was not happy about it

so I grabbed his hat and we went to sit in the surf and he was content.

He’s definitely a beach baby!!

All of my boys are beach boys. Both the boys got soo tan and their hair lightened even more in the sun and Hyrum’s curled even tighter in the humidity. I had a couple of beach bums by the end.

As fun as the beach was it wore us out as well. Almost every time I carried Elijah up the long hot sandy trail from the beach I'd find him like this at the house

Ahh to live in Michigan. I admit it is rather harsh weather wise sometimes but it rivals the prettiest beaches in the most tropical of places.