Beach happenings. . .week in review

"To live is so startling

it leaves little time for anything else."

- Emily Dickinson

In fact it actually leaves little time to clean one's house!

But hey, I don't think I want to be remembered for that anyway....

I was able to get to the beach twice this week, once on my birthday and once with a friend.

The birthday on the beach was well, a bit of a bust as it rained.

But later in the week my friend and I packed snacks and drinks, books, journals and of course

my handy dandy blue kids net, you remember that one.

We left fairly early set up our chairs, and umbrellas and had ourselves a grand time.

Eating, talking, relaxing, playing . . . rinse (literally),  and repeat.

And it was quite an eventful week at the beach . . .

This was Sunday morning, the birthday edition sunrise . . .

{Shoot.edit.submit}

It seems when I get out that handy dandy blue kids net (lol) I always make a few friends, and they are always quite a bit younger. Together, the three of us caught 375 hermit crabs with a few olive snails thrown in!! I put a few in my make shift glass aquarium and holy cow, one came straight out and took over the shell of another crab. Although this was much to the demise of that other crab, and he struggled for awhile trying to get him out all the way. I'm sparing you the photo and the details as interesting as it was. . . and yes you

are welcome!

They were all put gently back from where they came.....

As I was taking these pics of the hermits, I hear, "he got a shark".....

yes, I dropped everything to go look, well not the camera. It was a very young Bonnethead shark.

They can get up to 5 feet, but average around 3 feet, and are timid and not dangerous to humans.

AND, I just had to hold it . . . it was pretty amazing and its skin was a bit sand papery. He needed some

help staying above water until the water could wash back into his gills

I watched this guy practice his balancing act for the beach Olympics . . .

. . . and the seagulls take a bath.

But then, you see something that makes you go hmmmm . . . at first I wasn't exactly sure what it was, but I scooped it up with my net and was quite perplexed to see this poor red eared slider, a fresh water turtle, floating in the ocean, a very salty body of water. So I rinsed him with some fresh water, had a photo session and found him a safer home. Isn't he just adorable?

This year on the Galveston State Park beach, the vegetation is in abundance with these little yellow flowers and as I was looking for shells I spotted this tiny, and I mean dime size tiny butterfly looking for a snack.

{Flower Art Friday -I used Bonnie's (pixel dust art) painterly texture and love the effect I got on this}

And for Photo Art Friday the theme is doors, and in keeping with my beach theme I used doors from a church in Galveston and overlayed an image of pelicans with some clouds. I used a Kim Klassen texture sunkissed, and two from Pixel Dust - etched in stone and painterly, removing the textures at 100% off the doors in a way to accentuate the crosses. I thought the pelicans were perfect with church doors as they fly with such grace and the hint of clouds remind me of heaven.

"Heavens Grace"

Can you believe it's August already? My kids start back to school in a matter of weeks, and my son starts football camp for high school next week. We are a huge high school football fan family and in fact my daughter has the countdown at 21 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 40 seconds until the first football game.

And one last note, about a pesto called Ernesto, as in Tropical Storm Ernesto. It's on track to become a hurricane by Monday and currently in the Caribbean but it's a bit early to know just where in the Gulf of Mexico it will land. If the high pressure system currently in my area of the gulf stays then chances are it will most likely take a turn for Mexico. This is the time of year when hurricane season starts getting really fired up as the water is very warm, especially in the gulf which is what gives fuel to the storms to grown into major hurricanes. Keep your fingers crossed for all of us here in the gulf!!

Until next time,

Love, Kim

XO