Fleeting Summer

We didn't get to spend much time at the beach this year. It wasn't for lack of doing fun things, it just seemed we are off trying new things this summer.

Once we were back in school with a cold Fall heading our direction, we realized we wanted to be there. So that is what we did.

We wanted to try making a sand volcano, which Mel had mentioned she had done recently with her family on a holiday day trip. I told the girls about it and we gathered a few friends to go experiment with us.

It was a gorgeous day, there was little wind and the sun was baring down upon us like the hottest of summer days.

Before starting our volcano, Cori and two of the boys had a little castle building contest. They had 0nly 10 minutes they decided and since we brought limited tools, they also had to share.

Mostly they just giggled at how fast the time was passing.

Cassi and her friend judged, Cali helped the builders when she could.




In the end the tide won, no medals necessary.

Since the tide was so close, we ended up moving pretty far back from the water's edge to build our volcano. We have fairly wet sand so it would still work and we kept out finger crossed the tide wouldn't come in too far.

We worked quite hard at building the volcano, packing and wetting and packing some more.
Then the kids took turns digging out the hole from the top first, then in from the side. Once done we gathered a bit of small driftwood and a few dead spruce branches.


We lit it and HooRah, it worked.




Once our little fire burned itself out, the big kids headed off to play capture the flag.

I was watching to see where they were running of too, when I turned around I found Cali making her very own sand angel.

After a little while I glanced over in the direction of the volcano and Oh my goodness, the tide was consuming it too.

I called to the kids and when Cali realized what was happening, she started desperately trying to save it. She was running in circles around it, telling me to photograph it from every direction. She was truly devastated.

I finally calmed her down then the kids came and stood on it until the waves surrounded them.

Finally we called everyone's parents for pick up and waited in the parking lot for them to arrive.
The was a huge puddle so I figured there was little harm and hopefully it would remove some of the sand that inevitably makes it's own little castle in my car following one of these trips.

We ended the night following hot showers and cozy bedtime reading, dreaming of the our ability to hang on just a little longer to an Alaskan fleeting summer.