our SC vacation: random shots part 7 (favorite thing friday edition)

I'd like a show of hands from everyone who has had enough of my photo blog posts and are anxious for me to return to topics that involve interfacing with ill-behaved children at the community pool, homeschooling, and how to earn an income while living on a sailboat.

OK then.

That is a few hundred more than I expected.

I promise, I am almost done.

But first, I need to mention that with all of the swimming the children have been doing this summer, one of our most coveted possessions, are their awesome swim goggles.


Elizabeth has a pair of pink goggles, William a pair of blue and Carolyn a pair of lemon lime.

At first, the children liked to wear their goggles because they thought it made them look like a real live diver. But very soon, they came to realize that not only do their goggles look cool, but they help to protect their eyes from the chlorine in the water that would otherwise, turn their eyes bright red and cause a lot of discomfort which subsequently, would lead to a lot of whining.

Hence, the children wearing swim goggles not only protected their eyes ... it protected my EARS.


During our week at the beach, our children learned that salt water hurts eyes almost as much as chlorine.

So whenever they would go out to boogie board - or jump and splash in the surf - they wore their goggles.

Unfortunately, the third day that we were at the beach, my beautiful daughter, Carolyn, lost her goggles somewhere in the surf.

Before I go any further, I'd like to add that these goggles, relative to other brand children's goggles, aren't cheap. But, I have done a lot of research and field testing with a lot of less expensive goggles and I personally think that these goggles are the BEST on the market*.

So when my beautiful daughter, Carolyn, lost her goggles, I became quite agitated. Because I have told her once - if I've told her a million times - that when you take your goggles off, you can't just FLING them on the sand, because the tide will most likely come in and wash them away. Likewise, when we are at the pool, she can't just take them off and fling them on the deck because they will either get lost - or someone else might pick them up and keep them as their own.

But as it often happens when I'm talking to one of my four-year-old children, I may as well be talking to the wind. Because the children continued to assume that my primary purpose in life was to follow them around and pick up THEIR stuff.

Once I realized that my daughter was goggle-less, I told her that she wouldn't be getting any new goggles until she was older and more equipped to handle taking care of her things. Because young lady, money doesn't grow on trees and just because she lost something doesn't mean I'm going to rush out to the store and replace it.

I might have continued to rant and rave for a minute or two or ten, before I caught a look from my husband that very clearly said, "JEN. GIVE IT A REST."

And although it was very difficult for me, I did give it a rest. I actually STOPPED talking about the lost goggles and overwhelming irresponsibility of my four-year-old daughter.

It was at least another day or two after the goggle losing incident, that I happened to be scrolling through some of the pictures that I took while at the beach on the day the goggles in question were lost. And when I fell upon this sequence of pictures, I was in complete disbelief.

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?!

This first picture is my husband, Charlie, jumping in to the waves.

Charlie spent much of his youth in Santa Barbara and loves the beach. It is for that reason, he really enjoyed body surfing, along side his children.

But on the day that we bought boogie boards, Charlie thought it would be fun to try out the boogie board that we had specifically bought for Carolyn, but which she was not using at the moment.


And wow - as if it was even possible - he had even MORE fun boogie boarding.


But very soon Carolyn saw that her father was riding on her boogie board, and right about that time, she decided that she wanted her boogie board back. So she stood directly in front of him with her arms crossed, while Charlie grimaced because he KNEW what was coming next...


There was the gentle placement of her little four-year-old hand on his arm ... followed by a very sweet, "Daddy? May I please have my boogie board back?"

(Notice that she is still wearing her lemon lime goggles.)

And Charlie, being the good father that he is, swiftly got off the boogie board and gave it back to his daughter. But as I continued to scroll through these pictures, I happened to notice that Charlie had something in his grasp.

At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. But when I zoomed in - it became obvious that Charlie was holding something with a lemon lime hue in his left hand.

Yes ... that's it...

Charlie is holding his daughter's lemon lime goggles in his hand.

And well, that was the last time we ever saw Carolyn's lemon lime goggles.

Because in this next picture, they were gone.

When Carolyn rode the next wave in, she was without her lemon lime goggles. Which is around the same time I put the camera down and proceeded to ask, "Carolyn, love, where are your GOGGLES?"

And of course my poor child didn't know.

Internet, it was CHARLIE, not CAROLYN that lost the lemon lime goggles in the surf at the beach. And worse than that, it was my poor sweet, beautiful baby that took the rap. When I revealed to Charlie my discovery, he was stunned. At first he tried to convince me that he did not lose the goggles, or if he did - it was completely unintentional. But then he went a little crazy and accused me that I take pictures of EVERYTHING.

He knows my camera doesn't lie.

And really, does this look like a man I should trust?

********

* After a little more research, I've decided that Carolyn most definitely deserves a new pair of goggles, so I will be replacing them with this new pair, in lemon lime. They are identical to her former pair, except they come with a tinted lens.



You can buy these goggles on my Amazon Store, through this link. If you do buy the goggles through my little store, you will be helping to fund the coffer for giveways that I hope to begin, next week, for our breast cancer 3-Day walk.

In return, I would be more than happy to lend my sleuth investigative skillz to those who might need them.