We're Off To The Beach

The day finally arrived. The kids had been so excited ever since we announced that we would take all 10 of them to the beach in West Bay to celebrate the end of exams. We had six adults and  three vehicles to transport them. We met at the church the afternoon of their last day of exams. Oh, how they love going to West Bay to Infinity Bay! It is such a treat for them. Their families are not able to take them 5 1/2 miles away to swim. They don't have cars, and they don't have extra money for transportation, especially not for leisure.

We pretty much had the beach and water to ourselves! It was a Friday afternoon - no cruise ships were in. The Semana Santa crowds had not yet arrived. It was wonderful!! The kids were able to use the beach chairs (usually rented for a few dollars) for free. I only had to chase away one teenage boy who was buzzing around Julissa like a bee to honey. Whew! Watching 10 kids is a big job. I was so glad to have 6 sets of eyeballs on duty - well, actually 5 sets. Snider was holding down a table for us in the shade and watching all the bags. The rest of the adults took to the water and spread out. Don took the deeper water and was the outer boundary.

Greicy is blowing up the new green air mattress while Susan adjusts one of the masks for Jeicy.
We had four masks, two snorkels and three air mattresses. The kids were under orders to share. That had to be repeated often. Look at that empty beach!!

Our two youngest kids, Jeicy and Carlos, are swimming between Lynne and I. They do much better when they have the masks and snorkels.

Victor begged to bring the blue soccer ball along, and while they didn't play soccer on the beach, they managed to have fun with it in the water, as Victor is demonstrating above.  They threw it, kicked it, floated on it and even remembered to bring it home! Honduras was playing in the soccer tournament and had just beaten Mexico, so the boys were excited.

 The water was crystal clear and the nice little breeze had blown away the sea lice that had been spotted earlier in the week, so no bites!

     Jeicy, enjoying the green mattress, which had a small hole and leaked like crazy.

                             Jessie and Nelson preparing to take their turns on the mats.

                                            Jessie (I think) swimming to Lynne.

It sure was easier to keep track of the kids with so few people around - like when Karla left the water for the beach. She was pouting about something, didn't get the mat of her choice or whatever. Such drama!

I discovered that the sunscreen I applied was way past its expiration date and got a bit red. The kids all wanted to use the sunscreen, too, and they had the newer bottle. A Honduran woman noticed that and commented that they didn't need sunscreen with their nice brown bodies. I should have traded them.