A beach kind of day

Today should have been a day on the beach. I could and no doubt will, write a lot about beach days.
Living so close to the beach, the kids and I have always been beach bums through the summer, so Kieron just slotted in to that life style. Unlike his siblings, Kieron loved sand from a very early age. Jade wasn't too keen at first on sitting on and playing in sand and Callum hated the feel of it to the extent that I could have plonked him on a towel and known that he wouldn't move off it. Kieron on the other hand learnt the first day that sand isn't edible, hurts if it gets in his eyes and is great to throw around.
Shell hunts, clambering over rocks and splashing through rock pools before investigating baby crabs heralded the start of summer. Until Kieron was about 2 1/2 I worked term time only so the end of term for the older ones meant 6 weeks of glorious summer fun. Up early, picnic packed and off to the beach, staying until the day trippers left and the beach was ours. Callum and Kieron would have the beach to themselves and would run around like whirling dervishes until the food ran out or the cafe closed.

Home-time involved running through the house into the garden and getting the hose pipe out to wash off sand before both boys jumped in the bath to get off lolly stickiness and salt.
Sleepy eyed children, glowing from the sun, sand everywhere I looked and a feeling of summer lasting forever.
Each day was a repeat of the last all the time that the sun shone. New friends made daily, castles and moats built at the waters edge. Kieron having his first wee in the sea, pulling down his trunks to do so! Buckets and spades lost and other ones found. Burying each other in the sand and splashing in the sea. Waiting for high tide so that we could swim without climbing over rocks and teaching Kieron to doggy paddle.
When I changed jobs, at first I worked part-time so we could still have as many days as possible on the beach. By then Kieron had started school so some of his friends were always around to play with if Callum wandered off with his mates. It became quite normal to be surrounded by little boys one minute then scanning the shore to make sure Kieron was safe if he wandered off with them.
Even after the new term started, we still went to the beach in the evenings and weekends until summer said goodbye for another year. Body boards, buckets, spades and cricket set all got stored  for the following year. Little did I know when I put everything away in September 2009 that I would never get them out again.