Birthdays and Beaches

Yesterday was my son's 25th birthday, but we celebrated tonight with a feast to fit a king. Steamed shrimp, barbecued ribs, barbecued chicken, barbecued pork, baked beans, cole slaw, applesauce and cornbread, topped off with ice-cream and cake that my daughter made earlier as dessert.

The picture to the top left is the party scene before the party. A thunderstorm rolled through about 9 tonight so most of this stuff is sitting on the floor, lol, but that's the way it looked out the sliding glass doors off the living room.









Here's a better picture:



















After we ate, my daughter had this fantastic idea of walking along the beach, so I got a few pics while we were there...it was early evening by that time and getting ready to thunderstorm at that, so we had the beach all to ourselves...



















Here are the kids walking along the shoreline...



















Now this story gets even better. I was trying to find shells to put in my netting thingee on my deck and started walking. We walked a good ways when I saw a beautiful stretch of sand with actual dunes. This place used to have dunes so high that they had to build steps over them so you could get from your car to the beach without messing them up, but over the years, the storms have leveled them. But, this place we found, there were still a few dunes left. There was a sign that said do not walk on dunes so we eased in back of the signs and found...this...



















Paradise. We walked through the grasses and I took a few more pictures...keep in mind not too many people have seen this as it's strictly off limits but...there was no one around...and well I had a camera and the worse that could happen would be for them to come out and tell us we couldn't go back there and you know me...




















This is an actual dune. A freaking actual dune. You just don't see them anymore here because of the storms taking them all away and, yet, here was a perfect dune, hidden away from everyone...preserved...I walked further and there was a beautiful body of water and I even found a couple of piping plovers! Omg, piping plovers! These birds were near extinction at one time and I got them on film! The piping plover picture is right after this one...




































Aren't they the cutest things you ever saw? And this last one is the walk back...that's my son...I don't know who enjoyed his birthday more...him...or me. ;o)