Ladybug Beach Day

My oldest and youngest brother (all younger) came into town yesterday to help move my sister out of her dorm room and back to Dallas for the summer. We are going to miss her like crazy around here until the fall. It was great to see my brothers, who are all grown up now. I didn't get to visit with them nearly as long as I wanted to, but we did get to take a nice trip to the beach together today, amidst the packing.

The Lone Star Baby has been squealing in gleeful anticipation since I told her earlier this week that we were going to the beach on Sunday. She was so happy! We played in the sand and she jumped the waves in the shallows and went on a long walk with me. We collected bits of sand dollar that were large enough fractions to be impressive, finding several halves and more-than-halves, but no whole ones. One usually has to swim out to the sand bars for those, which we won't be doing. The weird thing was that there were ladybugs all over the beach - crawling everywhere on the wet sand where the wavelets were coming in and out. Since they eat bugs that live on plants, I could not figure out what they were doing on the beach, in constant danger of being washed out to sea. It was weird. Please let me know if you have any information on this sort of ladybug behavior, gentle readers.

The Lone Star Girl likes to go out to the big waves and find a place between where they break in which you can just loll around in the majesty of it like her aunt and I also like to do, so we did a good bit of that with her while Lone Star Pa watched her sister on the beach. It reminds me of the part of the Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling that goes "where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow".

My oldest brother and I talked shop a bit and my youngest brother did an expert job of applying sunblock to his little niece, while my sister was her usual wonderful self. It was a nice day.