Kite Festival

We had a great time at Ocean Shores for the kite festival. It was Dane and I, Denny, Heather, her little brother TJ, Kevin, Shirley, Joe, Shayne, Mindy, her dog Sheba, Rach and Tony. Unfortunately, Dane and I had to leave early, Saturday evening, but we crammed so much into that 24 hours that it felt like a whole wknd. On the way in we stopped and got pizza. When Mindy and Kevin and the babies got in we had dinner and hung around the house we rented. We attempted to start a fire in the firepit, then in the fireplace, not enough kindling. Later in the evening we went in the hot tub. About midnight Kevin got the bright idea to walk to the ocean. I jumped at that, I wanted to do that since we got there but no one else showed any interest in going. So it ended up me and all my kids and Heather's little brother, TJ hiking out there. There was a nice bright moon and I tried to get a picture of the kids' silhouettes in front of it, then I just gave up and turned on the flash. We're the only ones silly enough to walk to the ocean at midnight. Dane, TJ and I slept in the living room, the hide-a-bed that Dane and I shared was AWFUL. Shirley got in about 2 AM and Mindy's dog did her share of waking people up. I got very little sleep but had a great time nonetheless. Saturday morning Rach and I made a big breakfast and Mindy, Shirley and Joe cleaned up. Then I ended up taking a walk toward the loudspeakers I heard on the beach, I figured there must be some kites where they were coming from. Joe followed me and so we went on a hike together. We walked quite a way so I could see the big kitty and Joe wanted to see the big ball (like a soccer ball). They were big windsocks, there was a huge fish and a teddy bear too. Dane had to come rescue me since Joe was tired of walking and I was tired of carrying him. We all went to the dune buggy/quad track and all the young crazies rode the dune buggies. Shirley's kept breaking down. We went to the kite store and Kevin chose to buy the same kite that I've wanted to buy so I got the sample kite, they were $50. We got them back to the house and it turned out mine was much bigger than Kevin's so he took his back and they gave him a $100 kite in exchange. I found my price tag and it was actually a $80 kite. So we both got a deal. We took our new stunt kites to the beach to try them out, they were real fun and easy to fly. They're both kites without sticks, kinda like paragliders. Later in the evening when we tried to fly them the wind was too hard and the strings kept breaking. But it was fun before the wind got that hard, when we'd bring the kites down to circle around they'd pull us across the beach and we had to run to keep up with them. That's just about the whole day but, like I said, it was so much that it felt like a whole wknd. I was sure glad to get home and sleep in my own bed.