The beach: Thursday

I bet there are some people out there who are new to my blog. And those people are thinking, "How the he** many posts does she think she can milk out of this beach trip?"

And the answer to THAT, new friends, is SEVEN.

We were at the beach for seven days. With 13 children. And when one spends seven days at the beach, in one house, with 13 children, one earns the right to share the joy and pain with all of you for seven days. Those are the rules.

And also, there are family members who don't go on the beach trip, who are 100 percent dependent on me for the nitty-gritty details. Who hoped I would share them while I was there LIVING the details, but since I did not, I am compelled to do it now. Also, HELLO, ADAM'S FRIENDS, WHO ONLY READ MY BLOG FOR ONE WEEK A YEAR! You're welcome.

The rest of you: take heart. Just today and tomorrow to go. Then back to regular posting about my various neuroses and the failings of my bodily functions. (Quite frankly, it's amazing advertisers aren't beating down the door of my blog every day. THE CONTENT HERE IS AMAZING.)

So. Thursday morning began as many before it: with the girls all wanting to feed Amelia her morning bottle. Anna Kate won.

Not being around girls very often (see: three older brothers), Amelia was simply taken by her female cousins. Thursday afternoon she even joined them on the bed for their very first bonding session.

As is the annual custom, Thursday evening just before supper, I set up the tripod to get the group picture. Instead of posting all eight of them so you could see the absolute best shot of Every Single Person, I just grabbed the first one in the list. You are hereby forever indebted to me for that.

I can even prove that I chose the representative photo at random: Two of my children aren't even looking at the camera. (Kim, you share the short end of the stick with me. Will has a less-than-desirable expression on his face. Sorry. You suffer for the good of my world-wide Internet fanbase.)

Regardless of the fact that the group pictures weren't perfection, we did manage to get a few other cute ones.

Tiffany gets props for handling the T-shirt order this year. They really turned out cute.

Front:

Back:

They made the shirts available to the adults, and most -- but not all -- of us bought them. Had I known that almost everyone else was going to buy one, we might have, too. The group picture looked a little silly with only like six of us "out of uniform."

 Another annual tradition is the set of pictures we take of the kids on the beach at sundown.

I could just eat Amelia with a spoon. She looks like a little blob at the end of the lineup. PRESH.

Somebody shouted, "Everybody lean in!" And then Grant leaned in. Just Grant.

So then we were like, "Okay. Just stand there."

Next up were the footraces.

They started off great. Everyone running, everyone up.

And I mean, I'm sorry, Internet, but I can't help but laugh. Jake and Coleman BIT. IT. in the sand.

And I was still clicking away to get the rest of the race, and they just kept showing up in the background, face down.

Coleman made a partial recovery, but Jake's still face down. Leg parallel back there.

AND THEN. Let's all gasp together as Anna Kate bites it hard, too. Jake feels her pain back there.

Oh, Jakey. It's as if he can't get his feet under him. As if he may never get his feet under him ever again.

Gotta give him points for consistency.

There were no injuries in the end. And only a few tears. Nothing a few rounds of Presidents vs. Aliens on the iPad with G-daddy couldn't cure.

Jake'll teach that mean ole beach next year.