Homebuilders – Get to the beach!

Can you feel it coming? Those baking hot days, blue skies and the smell of summer? A fantastic way to spend fun, memorable times with the children, without breaking the bank, is to get to the beach. If you have a car, it’s cheap. If you take some drinks and food from home, it’s cheaper still.

Like many people, I have beautiful, dreamy memories of being at the beach when I was young. The first faint memories of being a toddler, my parent’s hands under my arms, lifting me over the endless shimmering waves as they break and surge up the beach. Of sitting in the shallow, sun-baked pools of water in the late afternoon once the tide has rolled out. Laying back in my own beach hot pool, staring up at the blue skies and the occasional seagull wheeling overhead. The afternoon feeling like it would last forever.

Sandcastles covered in shells, seaweed and driftwood. The tide rushing in and nibbling the family’s creation away bit by bit. To my child’s eyes, those sandcastles were massive, ornate dreamscapes. Looking back now, they were probably knee high and not that flash. But that’s one of the joys of being a child, the ability to imagine, make up stories and play.

The options are endless – trying to bury a still living sibling alive, their disembodied head poking out from beneath a mound of damp sand; dig a hole deep enough to see out the other side of the world; or get wet and roll in the dry sand to become a sand monster.

When I got older, there was the fun of swimming, floating and diving under waves, rolling around like a seal. Inevitably, getting slammed by a “big one” and having water shot up my nose and blasted into my ears. Throwing frisbees and kicking balls, rolling down sand dunes. Lying on your belly among the marram grass watching the tiny micro-life of little sand hoppers and spider things.

Staring down at all that sand, trying to comprehend how many grains there are on just this beach.
When it comes to Christmas gifts, perhaps avoid the gifts that need batteries and give a big yes to buckets, balls, boogie boards, sun hats, sunscreen and beach towels. But most of all, make time to play and connect with each other and connect with this amazing planet we live on.

A few words of caution: Water is serious stuff. Watch the children with an eagle eye, swim between the flags and slip, slop, slap.