Jamaica Beach

We rented a beach house on Galveston Island for some fun time with cousins and the kids couldn't wait to see everyone.  Unfortunately, the drive from the Dallas area is much longer than from Houston, so we had some time to kill.  We kicked off our vacation with a little mini golf.

 Finally, everyone arrived and we unpacked and started having fun together!

 

Then it was straight out to the beach!  We were on the third row so it was just a quick walk out to the sand. Jamaica Beach is great because it's quiet, shallow, and perfect for families.

Uncle Jason picked the perfect place to dig this hole because it stayed for days and was right at the tide line to fill up at high tide.  Every day the kids enlarged it and played in it for hours.

The kids dubbed it the "bathtub".

 And naturally, a toilet would be next to the tub.

Not sure why Ben wanted this so badly, but he maintained his "toilet" all week!

Nothing is more fun that sand and waves!

The whole gang eating together...lots of laughs with all these guys.

We found several hermit crabs and they quickly became fun little pets for the day.  Since we're moving, at least it was easy for me to tell the kids NO to bringing them home.

 

Straight from the hand!

The last time in the bathtub...a very large tide in the afternoon finally ate it up. The bigger waves did make for some great boogie boarding on our last afternoon.

Aunt Stacey found a really cool sandcastle kit so the hermit crabs got a pretty sweet home.

Finished product!

 We had a nice view from our porch, even though a few houses were in front of us.  It was a great place for coffee in the mornings and sunsets after dinner.

On our last morning, Tropical Storm Cindy was making her presence known. The storm surge covered the entire beach.

We still had fun walking around to see what washed up and we enjoyed our last few hours on the beach that was so different in just 12 hours.

One last picture!  Love these boys so much.  We said goodbye to the Frenches and started home.

 

The seawall was pretty interesting in places because some of the beaches were totally gone.  Naturally, we still saw plenty of people swimming though.  Crazy.  We enjoyed some lunch and then headed home right as the rain started.  Thanks, Cindy, for waiting until our trip was over to bring the bad weather!