We had a nice time visiting with Mark's dad & step-mom Marilyn. We went to the water park near Charleston the first day, and drove down to Mark's dad's house in Savannah afterwards. On day two we went from Savannah to Tybee Island for a day at the beach. It stormed from the time we got on the highway till we got there. We weren't sure what to do. I told the kids to pray for blue sky, because we can't really come back another day. Mark & I were already making alternate plans for next week, or the next. We followed the signs for beach parking, but it was storming there too. But then, out of nowhere appeared a patch of blue sky. So we drove toward it, and found it about two miles away, right above a lovely little beach in between a pier and a jetty. It was an answer to prayers. We were, needless to say, delighted and thankful.Before we left that day Mark's dad warned me of letting the kids swim alone because there had been several drownings recently. Since seeing Jaws about 25 years ago I've been exceedingly--compulsively--cautious of the ocean, and any salt-waters deeper than belly-button level. The one day I did venture beyond waist level with my sister, we waved at a man in a boat floating about twenty feet from us. After returning to shore, we noticed that he was pulling his boat in, and a crowd was gathering around him. We joined the crowd and saw that he had caught and pulled in a nine-foot shark. My sister might say it was a three-foot shark and the boat was much further from us--but it was a shark nonetheless.
So I lost sight of Margaret for two minutes--it might have been thirty seconds--and I imagined the worst. As it turned out she had gone to the towel to eat a sandwich. She began throwing bread to the seagulls, much to the delight of the children on the beach blankets nearby. When Little Mark discovered how to attract birds, he was relentless, and spent nearly a half hour with two fistfulls of salami walking after three or four pigeons that didn't seem to want to fly.
We went to see a show called "Return to the Fifties" at the Savannah Theater on Thursday night which was lots of fun. It always seems to happen that one of my kids gets called up to the stage when we go anywhere that calls for audience participation. This time it was both Ella & Margaret. They were invited to hula hoop on stage. Once Margaret was asked to participate in a chicken race at the Dixie Stampede in Orlando. Another time Rose was in Branson with her grandparents and she was "levitated" at a magic show. I can't recall all the other times, but those are the most notable.
