Fun in the sun...

 Last weekend was Jake's best friend, Michael's birthday.  His folks organised him a super cool sand boarding party.  Jake has never been sand boarding and was so excited about it.  The sun was out, but typically for this time of the year, the wind was blowing too.  That did nothing to stop the kids having tons of fun, nor did it stop me taking tons of photos.

After a brief lecture, the kids greased their boards up before heading up the dunes to test out their new ride...

 Strapping in...

 And down the first training dune...  It was a small one and the kids quickly progressed to steeper, far scarier slopes.  Kids are fearless...

 Hey my cool dude..

 Jake took the instructions fairly seriously.  Except the lean forward part...

 He had the sticking out your rear end part pretty waxed though...

 Sun, sand dunes and busy, fast-moving kids made for quite an exciting and challenging photographic session too...

 There's Jake on the bigger slope...

 And the long slog back up the dunes.  I've come to realise that kids also have limitless energy supplies.  I wish I could be a kid again...

 Hey mom, check me out!  I'm pretty good at this.  Hey, take a photo...

 You have to go forwards, Jake, not sideways...

 Whoa!  Watch out, Jake!

 It all happened so fast, that I didn't even have time to stop taking photos and rush on over to break his fall.  That and these photos are kinda very funny...

 And when I look at them now, I'm actually not sure how Jake didn't do some serious damage to his spine doing this.  His face is in the sand and his feet are nearly touching the back of his head...

 But this photo is the winning picture of my day.  It cracks me up like I can't tell you.  Check how much sand is pouring out his helmet!  Not to mention the gasp for air.  I don't think he could actually believe that he was still alive.  Then I put my camera down and rushed over to check that he was OK.  He had a blood nose, but nothing was broken.  My little rubber band boy.  Sorry I'm laughing Jake, this photo's hysterical...

 My boy's tough and it didn't take long, not even water to rinse the sand out of his eyes, before he was back on the board at the top of the dune to try again...

 And believe me that first fall wasn't his only fall of the day, I managed to get a couple of these too...

After a while he learnt that if the board feels like it's going skew, it's best to get as close to the ground before it kicks you off...

 Funny enough, it was his arms that were sore the next day.  He claims the board was heavy... my legs would have just about fallen off with all that "hiking" up the dunes the kids managed to do...

 As they got braver, the slopes got steeper and faster and they tried new moves...

Don't worry, he's not dead, he's just trying to get my attention...

 Sitting down on the board is far easier.  I went behind Jake on the beginner's slope and it was loads of fun...

Jake's still got sand falling out of places he didn't know he had.  I'd love to do this again on a less windy day.  It's not too far away from home and not madly expensive for a treat every now and then.  I'd maybe be brave enough to try this properly if I didn't have quite so many grown ups watching me.  Must be pretty similar to snow boarding, except I imagine snow tastes nicer than sand.

Otherwise, work & life has been unbelievably busy and I'm looking forward to the weekend.  We're in for a big storm, with flash floods and gale force winds predicted, so perfect for staying indoors.

Love,

Sue XXX