The Beach & The Garden

We were down at Sandwich church today, which means we skipped 7:30am Church at the Beach in Brewster, which means Catherine was a teensy bit upset when we pulled into church and it wasn't the beach. Luckily for her, there is a beach at this church (a lake beach, not an ocean beach, but still very nice) and since there is no children's church during the summer we often spend service time there.

We accomplished a lot in a very short time at the lake beach.

Catherine ran.


She looked for stuff in the water.


She ran some more.


She took a rest.


Sang a song.


Got a couple handfuls of sand.


Threw handfuls of sand into the water.



Looked for some big rocks.


Threw big rocks into the water.


Meanwhile Mary was pouting because I wouldn't let her run on the floating bridges.


Eventually she started playing in the sand.


And perked up a little bit.


And Catherine got her involved in smoothing out the sand for dancing.



Mary got a little sidetracked by the sand in her toes.


But when I asked Catherine to demonstrate her Delicious Dance, she obliged, albeit briefly.



There was also an extended period where both girls were chasing an unsuspecting pair of ducks around the beach, Mary making her universal animal sound the whole time (it mostly resembles a bear growl), but I don't have any pictures or videos of this because it involved numerous threats from both girls of diving headlong into the water so my hands were a little busy.

My plan to make it back to church in time for communion was not entirely successful, but we did make it back before church was over for long and someone sent out a search party for us.

And we even had enough energy to play at Heritage Museum & Gardens for a bit afterwards.


Catherine really liked this little maze.


Although at one point she and Mary got stuck on different paths and it took a bit of convincing to get Mary to listen to me about walking around, not through, the wire fence.


The only way I got Catherine out of there at all was by telling her there was something else further on that I thought she might really like.

I was eluding to a large Carousel housed in the gardens. As expected, Catherine loved it (getting ready for bed tonight she told me it was her favorite part of the day) but Mary was not impressed. She rode it once (with me standing next to her holding on) but was pretty unhappy the entire ride, and I'm pretty sure she was shaking at some point - so we found something Mary is afraid of. The second time she and I watched Catherine and Daddy go round and round, and Mary thought that was a lot more fun.