Counting to Seven

Mr and Mrs de Elba, 

Justamum and Justadad, 

ARE YOU READY?  GO!

One, two ..... three, four ......., five six ....... seven!

In these pictures I have omitted the hundreds of people also in the surf.  It loses a genuine-ness, but I omit them for time reasons.  And because some of them were not pretty.  (As a general rule, wouldn't you wear BIGGER swimmers the bigger you got?  Not so in Australia.  It seems that the bigger you are, the flimsier the swimmers you wear.  Yeesh.)

Buzz often played out in the deep with Belle as they are both older (6 and 7 years old) and are very safe.  It will be a few more years before we choose not to include them in the head count, but they gave us no panicky moments this year.  They could usually be found together, Buzz in a black shirt with red sleeves, Belle in a black shirt with cute little purple swimmers.

Jessie and Banana are four and five years old, and they loved playing in the shallow water together, splashing in the waves and running up the beach squealing.  Jessie was in a purple shirt and swimmers that angered her frequently for no apparent reason, and Banana wore white and light pink (I think.)

Woody and Boris are two and three years old, and they were usually playing in the sand and fighting over beach toys.  Although they became more confident in the water towards the end of the week, they started off both unwilling to get wet, so this limited their potential for getting lost to sand, crowds, and leaving the beach rather than drowning.  This lowered our anxiety rating from 98% all the way down to 91%.  Awesome.  Woody in a red shirt with blue sleeves, light blue shorts, Boris in light and dark blue shirt and blue swimmers.

Baby Bimi is one year old and she was generally with the adult doing the head-counting.  We still counted her though.  It seemed right.  She wore white with pink like Banana.

One, two, three ....... four-five-six-seven!

At times, a swimming child would decide to come up to the beach and join the sandcastle-makers.  This was relatively easy to count like the example above, and sometimes gravitated into "One, two ....... three-four-five-six-seven," which was also easy.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven!

Perhaps the easiest configuration of all occurred when everyone decided it was time to build sandcastles and fight.  Often, two or three of the adults would go for a swim when this happened.

One, ....... um, two, ....... three, four ....... five? Yes, five ....... six .......   .......   oh crap.

This didn't often happen.  It was usually resolved by looking behind the shade tent, or a little further up the beach.