"The Beach"

So you may have heard me mention that we have an incredible park reserve behind our neighborhood. It stretched for acres and acres. Within the reserve there are several ponds and lake, but one in particular that we love. Its smaller than a lake, I would say it is a large pond. But everyone here calls it "The Elm Creek Beach". We are working on being okay with calling the beach after living in VA Beach. It used to be a normal, sort of dirty and seaweedy pond. But a couple years ago they emptied it out, put several filters in it, and umbrellas on the sand, and concessions. It is a great, clean and safe place to take the kids swimming. And the best part about it is that its in walking (or bike riding) distance! The kids and I had been there once before, but we decided to take DJ along with us the past weekend to show him all the fun!

On the way there we spotted a turtle in the trail. DJ picked it up the show the kids, okay the thing was MAD. And apparently his defense tactic was to try to pee on the intruder. Luckily no pee actually hit DJ. But it was not a small amount of liquid.


Once he set it down, the kids tried to chase it around, it got confused trying to find a way out of the madness. Then Annica said, "We have to be quite! We are scaring him!"... she was right, it is not nice to scare wildlife. So we backed up and the turtle got away into the grasslands.



When we got to pond or the beach, the adventure continued. We played for a little while, then they had everyone exit while several life guards with bio-hazard bags started walking through the water. Can you guess why? Yup, someone had pooped in there! They took a long time to put chemicals in it, then roped off about a quarter of the pond. We stayed for a while longer and the kids had a BLAST! They dug and played in the mud and dirt, and they are both a little bit too brave when it comes to being in the water, so we have to watch them close! Luckily DJ loves the water too, so he doesn't mind doing a little chasing!