About sand, and sand and other dislikes

Lately I discovered that there are quite a few things I very strongly DISLIKE... (HATE sounds so...passionate, emotional, bad..... but it's easier to say, because it's shorter). For example I hate.. ahm, dislike TUNA VERY much. I hate mosquitoes and mosquito bites. And I hate being wet, damp and sandy... which often brings me into a conflict. Around here in the Caribbean there aren't really any places to go to with children just for playing, so you go to the beach. I theory I love beaches, but practically, there is too much sand. I love swimming, snorkeling and diving but then, when you have to get back to your dry towel there is this mass of nasty sand in between me and my towel. Big conflict. But so far I always survived walking over the sand to my towel, but still I greatly DISLIKE the sand on my feet. Especially, if there is a wet toddler involved who LOVES playing in the sand and also THROWING with the sand...grrrrrrr.... big conflict, big, big, BIG conflict.

Well, today another dislike was added to my sand/towel challenge: We went to a lovely spot here on the island of Tobago called Englishman's Bay. It was our day off and we went with our friends Mel (AUS), Isabel and Daniel (CH) with their baby daughter Sofia (Ned's SPECIAL girl friend). Well, us mums stayed with the kids and played in the (yucky) sand (I got sandy all over, grrr) and Mel and the boys went snorkeling. They hadn't been gone 5 minutes and it started raining. And when it rains it pours, I tell you, that ain't no fun if with a toddler who slowly starts shivering. So here I was, sandy (YAY) wet from swimming as well as getting constantly showered for I don't know how long, waiting for the others to return, holding a cold kid on my arm, trying to keep him warm with a rather damp towel, snuggling under a tree to keep the rain off us as good as possible and praying that no coconut would drop on our heads When the others finally came back we re-located ourselves under a little shelter thing which had so many holes in the roof that it would have been better to snug up to my tree again. And additional there was this guy selling ice cream, he had his truck parked around 10m away from the shelter so we could hear lovely ice-cream-truck-music playing "jingle bells", "O Tannenbaum" and "Stille Nacht". Writing all this, sound pretty ...um... negative, but to be honest, despise carrying a little wet boy on my arm and being wet and sandy, i had to laugh so hard... I mean, look at us... we are at the beach and listening to Christmas music... in September :o)))))

And it really was a nice outing..... with all the sand and water and rain and everything