Sea Snapshots and Silhouettes

It's a short walk to the beach, but one family member in particular often looks like quite burdened as he lugs what he deems an unreasonable amount of weight.

Still, once we hit the corner and see this--

it's funny how his trudging becomes more of a delighted scamper.

Jackson and Alex never tire of time in the ocean, and Kenyon spends time in the water or busying himself in the sand.  We are all aware that wiling away a few hours at the beach is much more logistically difficult in our normal life back in Colorado, so we make this short trip as much as possible.

Last weekend, I gingerly brought the camera into the water, capturing moments that we can look back on in the coming years.  I need to choose a couple that are wall-worthy, so I'm all ears if there's one in particular that you like.

These first ones are of Al Pal...

...and Jackson...

...and Sam.

Wattamolla Beach

We heard of a possibility of seeing the sun on Sunday and optimistically ventured out to Royal National Park, the oldest national park in Australia and the second oldest in the world (after Yellowstone).  We're fortunate to live just a short drive south of the park, and after winding our way through lush, palm-filled greenery, we pulled into the Wattamolla Beach car park and saw this:

Now, we could have been very happy spending the day right there in the car park, exploring the expanse of rock and water and watching the water dragons skitter through the trickling pools.  And seeing the patches of blue in the skies growing larger by the minute, we were all psyched.

We tore the boys away from rock-hopping with the promise of the actual beach beckoning below and began the walk down the path.

see the water dragon towards the bottom?

Just a moment or two into the walk we caught a glimpse of this:

The name Wattamolla is an Aboriginal word for 'place near running water', and this area is a perfect congregation of the waterfall flowing into a lagoon, which then runs out to meet the ocean.

After taking the above picture I blinked, looked around for my family, and spotted them down at the water, already crossing where the lagoon runoff meets the sea.  I took a moment and was so thankful that the sky was now almost all blue with only mere wisps of white clouds.

postcard-perfect

Alex added the Wattamolla notch to his boogie boarding belt.

Sam and I had a moment to enjoy each other.

I played Kenyon's 'count to five and jump in the water' game, his 'count to eight and jump in the water game', his 'start from really far back and jump in the water' game, and his 'start really close and count to three and jump in the water' game.  Then Sam played; Sam didn't capture any pictures of me but imagine me jumping really high and athletic-like just like my husband (and while we're at it, imagine me as tan as my husband as well).

So much fun, and only the first part of our Sunday 'holy crap, it's finally sunny' adventure was over...