A Peaceful Beach Breakfast // Invasion of the Killer Ducks

July  11th, 2013: A beautiful morning. And what better way to celebrate a beautiful morning than by having breakfast on the beach at 7:00am? Let's face it: we were all up anyways - might as well make the most of it!

I have to give credit to Chrissy, though; it was her idea and she put a lot of time into preparing all of the food, packing the bags, etc. Nicely done, Chris-Anne!



Hitting the road! Here is the lovely Chrissy enjoying the swaggishly awesome sunglasses we found in our house. (Turns out these belonged to Katie. Thanks, Katie.)

Here I am, looking and feeling slightly out of focus. 7am beach breakfasts will do that to you, but I woke up soon enough!

One thing that I underestimated (and Chrissy didn't) was the complexities of feeding a small child on the beach. Thankfully, Chrissy came prepared with the booster seat, cheerios, and prunes. Cheers!

Meanwhile, the rest of us had gourmet breakfasts prepared in advance by Chef Chrissy. Note the two beautifully baked gluten-free muffins. 

However, I was only destined to devour ONE of these delicious delicacies. Now, normally, nothing in all creation could separate me from a gluten-free muffin, but... something extraordinary occured...

Jesse (sporting his stylish new mohawk, slightly crumpled from sleeping) was the first to notice the approaching storm. 

With despair in his heart, he cast his gaze upon the force that would threaten all that we held dear...

Look carefully.

...They're coming...

"Oh, cute ducklings," you might say to yourself, if you didn't know the evil lurking in the hearts of these dastardly avian creatures.

At first, we thought they were cute as well. Jesse and Janna both kept shouting with excitement. Janna's shrieking, in particular, was winsome in the basic language she used ("DUCKS! DUCKS!"). Even I was swayed into sacrificing some of my precious gluten-free muffins to draw them closer. 

This was a terrible mistake.

Once the ducks had smelled blood tasted Chrissy's muffins, they were instantly hooked and intent upon eating the rest, and us as well. Janna's shrieks quickly changed to "NO DUCKS! NO DUCKS!" as the ducks crossed the invisible line of intimidation between humans and wild animals and began to climb toward our beach blanket.

Here they come, steady as soldiers. And these two little ducklings had SIX brothers and sisters, plus one meaning looking mama duck! Note how they have transgressed the natural boundary between man and animal by moving past Jesse's sandals. Naturally, they were about to eat him, so...

...asserting my powerful forces of intimidation, I scared all the ducks away. 

Vances: 1

Ducks: 0

Unfortunately, I had counted my eggs before they had hatched (heh).

THE DUCKS CAME BACK!

All the way to the blanket. 

Four times. 

They were obviously planning on overwhelming us through sheer endurance and determination. The video below provides rare and terrifying footage of one of these waves of attack. (Please understand that the tone of my voice DOES NOT denote panic - just a high-pitched determination to save my family.)

Eventually, the ducks left us for good. While this may be attributed to our lack of food, which we had feverishly eaten in an attempt to save ourselves, I think the main reason for our salvation was Robyn. As hungry as the ducks were, she was way more hungry, and determined to eat anything that came across her path.

"Just try it, ducky..."

The rest of the visit was like a visit to paradise! Shortly after 7, there was almost no one at the beach at all. It was like a private resort - we had the whole place to ourselves. Here, Janna was delighted at both the fact that she got to wear her life preserver and the fact that she could play with sand toys!

Meanwhile, Robyn was finishing up her breakfast - and she was serious about this. No wonder the ducks were intimidated. Having forgotten a hat for her, we realized that a clean diaper would work just as well AND make her look like a pirate!

Beautiful.

Jesse, meanwhile, was training himself with strenuous swimming exercises. Looking at the photo, you might think that this was a stop-motion while he splashed his arms and legs. Nope! He was just holding this pose (presumably building up massive strength and endurance).

A picture from the front. Now there is determination.

What a great kid! A few times, Jesse lost his footing and plunged face first into the water (a humorous-but-scary effect of the life-preserver is that it plants his face solidly into the water when he falls forwards). Despite being obviously shaken when this occurred, he got up quickly and went back into the water. What a trooper.

After swimming time, we decided to make a massive sandcastle with a huge moat. Here the kids are listening to me with rapt attention as I divulged to them the secrets of sand-castle construction.

Here is Janna, deciding to help by filling her bucket full of water and dumping it on our sand castle. She did this a lot, pretty much destroying it each time (hence, no photos of the non-existent sand castle). Someday!!!

Robyn, amused at our efforts. We had to watch her pretty carefully: not content to eat the breakfast we had provided, every once in a while she would take a fist full of sand and stuff it into her mouth, much to the amazement and anxiety of Chrissy and me. Well, to be honest, more to my anxiety than Chrissy's - Chrissy was pretty good at catching it before it happened when she was on watch. (I became very good at fishing it out, on the other hand!)

Chrissy's cool artistic shot. Note the sweet reflection!

Janna, basking in the destructive power of a simple bucket of water.

At one point, we decided to bury Jesse. He was actually really enjoying this at first... and then he wasn't!

Thankfully, there are few things that a juice box won't fix.

Janna, definitely planning on throwing sand at Jesse before we sternly suggested otherwise.

Jesse and Momma rinsing off after a fun morning at the beach.

It seemed appropriate to take an artistic shot of this juice box as we cleaned up.

Back at our blanket, what did we find!????! Have they no shame!????

So that's our story - Beach Breakfast was great, and I highly recommend that you try it! But if you do, be sure to bring some duck repellent... or a ravenous eight-month old... to protect yourselves. Jesse, in particular, had a really great time. As we left the beach, he looked at me solemnly and said, "But I just want to stay at the beach forever." While that is not really a possibility for us, we will certainly visit Mooney's Bay again soon, and preferably, early in the morning.

I wasn't actually present when this picture was taken, but I can only assume that the kids are joyously thinking back to the fun times had at Mooney's Bay. :)

That's all for now. 

Until next time.... beware of ducks!