A Hot Layer of Sand (Skye Posts IV)

Childhood, Parenting, Random poetry, Skye Posts Add comments

Hiya 🙂

We knew it was supposed to be the warmest day of the week, so Hubby and I had planned to take the boys to a beach where they could get lots of rockpooling action with their shrimp nets.  We decided last night that we would get up about 6.30am.  Both of us forgot that an alarm would need to be set.  The boys chose today to sleep in, of course 😉

We finally got moving around 8.30am, and rushed about trying not to waste any more of the day (as I didn’t want anyone cooking on the sand in the midday sun!).  As I was coming out of the shower, the fire alarm above the kids’ bedroom door started cheeping ominously, but stopped after I glared at it and said a few choice words about it daring to try and ruin our plans. 

I’m that scary.

The boys wore their wetsuits in the car, and we brought their minion trainers from last year’s beach trips, because no one cared if they got wrecked!  It was indeed a very sunny day and all the windows were down in the car, with the music blaring once we left the waterfront at Kyleakin (where we are staying).

Unusually, we found the beach at Waterloo (near Broadford) pretty quickly, but there was a rather long marshy trek across the wet sand to get to the proper beach and rocks!  The sea seemed to be extremely far out, and I was worried that by the shape of the beach we would be pretty cut off trying to get back to the car, which we’d parked outside a row of houses; and would maybe have to go a circuitous way back.  Hubby assured me none of the research he had done had mentioned that, nor warned that the tide came in very fast (which was my other concern, seeing the lay of the land).

The menfolk discarded their shoes pretty quickly, and the boys absolutely loved the feel of the sand between their toes.  I kept my shoes on, and the support dry-ish for my rather large bunion on my right foot, which was still annoyed at me after yesterday’s exploits on the stones…!

The first rock pool we came to was a large shallow one, where the boys found a ‘vicious’ hermit crab, some sea anemones and lots of shrimp. We took a funny video of Youngest, who was hysterically laughing at the proposal of holding a shrimp, begging Eldest to go first, but both boys did brave them in the end.

I had wanted to hold Youngest’s hand, too, but it was already rather messy…

Hubby and the kids then went wading quite far out from the shore, as the water was shallow for a good stretch, and Youngest wanted to practice his swimming.  Eldest became bored pretty quickly, and decided to scale the rocks beside him to get to me instead.  He did really well, even with bare feet and a shrimp net!  I was on the rocks by this point because the tide had begun to turn and had chased me and our numerous belongings up there 😉

Eldest splashed about in another rock pool, while Hubby had a hard time convincing a tiring Youngest to come back to the beach in a sensible fashion, and not to try and outdo Eldest’s feats; or worse swim further out to sea…a bit of tantruming ensued, but there was soon a race (“super cat speed!”) to the next rockpool, where Eldest found the biggest crab of the day.  Hubby was very jealous.

We also used the ‘glass’ bottomed boat for the first time, and even let the crab (and later, a sea snail) ‘drive’.  Successful first launch, methinks.

Youngest was truly exhausted by this point, and was also shivering.  The beach was deserted, so I quickly dried, stripped, re-suncreamed and re-dressed both boys without modesty (not that they cared, anyway), before carrying Youngest a fair way back. He eventually stopped crying and agreed to have an oat bar and walk for me 😉

There was quite a lot of water to navigate on our path back, so everyone’s shoes got a good soaking, and we were all glad we hadn’t left it any later!!

Tempers were pretty frayed in the car when Hubby nipped out to get supplies, and the boys continued in that vein when they got back to the cottage, despite being fed. They didn’t really stop arguing all the way through Hubby calling the Landlady to OK me changing the battery in the fire alarm so that we wouldn’t be rudely awakened in the night (been there…) nor did the kids heed any warnings that the tablet was going to be taken away!

Sure enough, Eldest lost his usual tablet privileges through being violent towards his brother, then began creating merry havoc in the livingroom; so I sat with him for a bit and showed him an app on our new tablet that went through all the pieces and moves involved in chess (or ‘chest’, as the boys have christened it) using engaging videos.  Eldest was riveted!!  I was able to slink away after a bit and get more writing done, while he asked Hubby questions and then challenged him to a real-world game 😉

I even remembered to put the very sandy wetsuits and shoes out in the sunny garden to dry.  It only took a few hours as it was so hot!

We all enjoyed a ‘breakfast grill-up’ for dinner, which Youngest decided would go best with a left-over wrap from yesterday; then the boys played draughts again. (They came in while I was editing the photo, and asked that they be given unhappy faces and runny noses…)

 

Hubby went for a short walk while I got the boys tucked in and settled. He snapped a quirky sign on his travels!

 

Mr. Laptop continues to be very slow at uploading photos to the WordPress Editor, or letting me change any of the text colours etc!  I think all these holiday posts are going to have to be backdated, but I have been trying hard to keep up with the days as they happen, and writing it all down for you 🙂

Today’s words hinted at divorce proceedings, or even a death; but they did not seem like nice holiday topics – so I went a different way:

 

 

Layer  Trustee  Split  Grave  Habit  Judicial  Admit  Responsibility  Beer

 

As each layer came off,

I beseeched the trustee

Of my dignity;

But she split

And left me in a grave state

Of abandon.

This was so out of habit for her

I just carried on –

Relishing the sudden lack

Of judicial input.

I decided neither of us

Would admit to guilt;

But soldier on and swear to

Responsibility lying

Solely with the beer…

 

I wonder how the above situation turned out, and whether the speaker regretted anything the next day 😉 what do you think she got up to?!

 

[Click here for the rest of the posts about our Skye holiday]

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Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

 

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