Make sure your recreations re-CREATE / Sam's first visit to the Beach!

My friend, SH, was recently chatting about the danger of allowing not only your physical being but also your spiritual, emotional and mental being to become weakened by whatever daily challenges we face...my "friend" being Selwyn Hughes and his "chatting" being one of his daily devotional Bible readings. As we all know, the more our defences/spirits weaken the more of an easy target we become to Satan. So he felt it was important to make sure that your recreations really do re-CREATE your spirit, your drive, your positivity, your faith, etc. Recreations which do little more than instil competitiveness, frustration, disappointment are really, at the very least, pointless if not just more detrimental.

So, as we've been riding a high wave of throwing up and sleepless nights again, we decided to do something plain and simply FUN and RELAXING this morning and just after Sam woke up and had his first bottle, we bundled him and Meg into the car (it was way too early for Luke to roll outa bed) along with some muffins, a spare bottle and some boiling water (thanks Cindy) and, of course, Sam's nappy bag and headed off to Blouberg Beach. We arrived just before 9am in order to avoid the inevitable crowds and heat and figured we'd just give it a half hour go to see how Sam did with this strange new surrounding. Just stepping out of the car was rejuvenating enough, especially when your social life revolves around therapy or doctors rooms and the school carpark. Well, our little smurf enjoyed it so much that we landed up staying just over an hour and the only reason why we eventually left was because a) I actually hadn't thought to pack in any toys for Sam (hey - not used to doing the "outing" thing with Sam...need some practice) and b) Chris had a haircut later in the morning.

It was so incredibly refreshing just having those short sixty minutes and an awesome change of scenery. So, we have already planned another trip to the beach in two weeks time...and this time I'll be way more prepared.

 Sam, quite willingly, eating a chocolate muffin for breakfast.

 Oral aversion? What oral aversion?

 We know that a lot of the RTS kiddies have problems with textures like sand and grass, etc but Sam had absolutely no problem having his feet in the sand and later even allowed me to pour some of it over his feet and legs.

 The water was F.R.E.E.Z.I.N.G and I barely managed a one second tipping in of my big toe before getting cramps but Meg and Chris were much braver...

 Although Meg was not brave enough to give up without a fight when Chris tried to throw her in!

Luckily he was just playing.

 But she chose to rather keep her distance just in case :)

 Table Mountain

 The  Seli1 which has been stranded just outside of Blouberg since 2009

 And then...my camera's batteries died so for the most important pics of Sam actually braving the cold water/sand I had to make use of my phone's camera.

And of course, no place/event goes without some hand clapping!