You'll remember in my post I told you that we were going to the waterfront today, to watch the boats and play in the park. Well, we had a change in plans. Our family is like that. We kind of take it as it comes, and when a good opportunity pops up, we go for it. It's nice to be unstructured at times. It's another way of saying we are not very organized.

I think I'm going to keep a set of old towels, buckets and shovels in the back of the car during the summer months just in case. We often go out on drives, and sometimes we land at the various beaches along the way.

It was a beautiful day as there was a nice breeze blowing and it kept us nice a cool. One of the nice things about this particular beach is that it had showers where you could rinse off and a playground near by where I let the kids run around until they were mostly dry.

We've had MT with us, who is the little girl Meelie spent the night with on Saturday, with us for most of the day. They play so well together. When we got home from the beach, Meelie called MA (another one of Meelie's friends) and, since we are such masochists, we invited her over for a play date as well. In reality, it works out fine because the kids are totally occupied.

But wait! There's more! Two other friends on our street came over to play as well. So I'm marinating steaks for dinner, and preparing salad and potatoes, and I have six kids in the kitchen with me. And they get the idea that it's time to clean the fish tanks. On a side note, they were in desperate need of cleaning so this was a plus. Generally, one of the adults cleans them, and the kids help. Because Chickie wanted to earn some extra money, she took on the task by herself, with little helpers of course.

It was totally somewhat chaotic for a bit, with the cooking and the cleaning going on. Of course, they wanted me to be there for advice, so I was constantly interrupted. Don't tell anyone but I quite enjoyed it. My husband retreated to the garage, and the bbq, getting it all prepared. He has a harder time when there are a bunch of kids around.

All in all, it's been a great day. Visiting with friends, going to the beach, getting dinner ready and cleaning fish tanks. All of this done with kids surrounding me.

If you ask me, it couldn't get any better than that.