Yet another day at the beach...

I was able to get the day off today, so I made a call and went over to hang out with Kristen, Katya, and Ben (Jack was at one of his friends house). After a breakfast of waffles, scrambled eggs, and links we got ready and headed to the beach!
While we were in the water, we noticed this gigantic boat, coming out of the canal! It was so huge! It felt like a real-life Titanic! Me and the kids decided to run to the pier to get a closer look before we missed... yeah, try running with three kids in the sand! It was so hard! But Ben was so cute... he was a little behind, so we'd turn around and say, "Ben, hurry up! Let's go!" And he'd answer back, "I'm (breath) running (breath) just (breath) as (breath) fast (breath) as (breath) my (breath) little (breath) legs (breath) can (breath) go!"
Those of you that know him, can totally understand the breathing part! He's so funny!We barely made it before it was too far, but we were able to see it pretty close!It was kind of weird because it came out of the canal with the big tall part ahead, but then when it left, it had to turn around so that the tall part was at the end.Here you can see it on it's way towards Chicago, I think, (it was heading towards the left of the picture). And of course, everyone on the pier thought it was so cool when the smoke started coming out!I got the kids to sit up on the pile of cement at the end of the dock.Here's a close up! They are so adorable!
They wanted me to take another picture with the boat in the back-ground... you can barely see it there at the top left-ish side of the picture.
On the way back to our towels, we stopped and got ice cream for the walk back...
I told Katya, many, many times, to not feed the birds because they'll poop on our stuff or our heads, and Kristen was so sure they wouldn't... then one of them pooped on Kristen's legs, luckily they were covered with a thin layer of sand so she didn't actually get touched by it. The picture above is of Katya sharing her cone with one of the birds, AFTER, my firm "DON'T FEED THE BIRDS" talk!

We had a great time at the beach. Then we went and got pizza at the beach restaurant, then I dropped them off at home.

Kristen was so funny when I tried to leave. "Don't leave me here! Don't leave me in this crazy house! Don't leave me with these hooligans!" And she kept begging and pleading and it was so hilarious!

This was a very busy day... at one point, the kids heard the 'ICE CREAM TRUCK' and were so excited! And Ben was like, "I love the ice cream man! He always gives us ice cream!"

Another time I had to firmly talk to Katya about talking with strangers and she kept telling me that the old man with the fishing rod looked like a nice man... so I tried to tell her about how Lucifer was a good looking guy, but turned bad, etc. Which turned into a huge can of worms... so, Rach, you may have some random questions coming your way! Sorry!