We spent last week staying in a house in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with W’s parents and her brother. I spent most of the week battling the remnants of the cold I had the week before we went away, and managed to ignore it on the most part - although jumping into the sea on one of the days in nothing but a pair of speedos caused such a shock to the system that my head exploded in headache. It was the kind of headache that makes you feel sick, and not know what to do with yourself.
For some reason walking out into the sea as an adult is very much easier than it was as a child. Perhaps being there to impart confidence into our children has something to do with it? - not showing them that you think it’s cold. Whatever the reasoning, by the end of the week I was quietly impressed - our kids had no fear of rolling around in the sand, caked to the eyeballs in sand (read:mud), spitting salt water from their mouths, and washing sand from their eyes. They raced me into the water at every opportunity, splashed like mad, and survived multiple buckets of water over their heads without any tears.
We’ve come a long way from the children of 18 months ago who wouldn’t touch dirt with their hands.
More than once during the holiday we found ourself quietly commenting that we are in the business of building memories - and tend to focus all our efforts on that. My other half deserves a medal for the hours spent on the beach this holiday - we were incredibly lucky with the weather, and used it as much as we could - much to her chagrin; she would have been far happier walking the coastal paths than reading on the beach while Dad ran himself ragged each day in the surf (pursued by three little maniacs).
One final thing; huge thanks go to W’s Dad who paid for the amazing house we stayed in - a stereotypical three storey “seaside” house on the hill out of Fishguard. It provided a wonderful base for the 8 of us during the week. I wrote similar sentiments in the visitors book before locking the doors.
Our eldest left her own note (which she thought we had not seen) - thanking the little girl who’s bed she must have been sleeping in for swapping for the week, and telling her all our names, where we came from, and what it is like where we were from. I quietly took a photo of it.
There are many more photos on Flickr.