Playing Hooky with the wife and kids...

Friday was the first day off in a while, and we hit the beach. Went to Revere, where they were having a sand castle competition. My boys and I have been known to make a couple sand castles. I had a pretty involved arch going that I'd spent maybe an hour on, and it literally fell down about ten seconds before I'd have said it was done. Had a tower on top of it, undercuts, and some real "frustrated-architect" stuff going on.

My youngest son had me build him a rough tower (about eight inches wide) that he was going to carve. It was easily three feet tall (no small achievement with regular old beach sand), and it immediately fell when I turned around to find him a razor clam shell to carve it with. We did another, but it didn't have the height of the first one. He put a ball on top, made of sand, which must have weighed about two pounds. ...the size of a candlepin bowling ball.



I let him carve the tower sides after he c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y put the ball on top. The ball took us both a few minutes' effort, and he just loves making them. You can roll these and toss them back and forth forever if you make them right. He dropped one we'd made later on, and it didn't come close to breaking. As for the tower, normally we'd go for thinness. Architects just live for a high slenderness ratio. But he made a few swipes to clean it up a bit and then ran for the water to play.

Kids today wig out if their chicken fingers look different than the last twenty times they had them. But for my two, the sight of a sand castle they'd been working on for a while suddenly collapsing into a pile seems to roll right off their shoulders. I think they have learned nothing lasts forever. Hopefully that will help they day they shove me into a box.

It's become a sport to see how long the sand castles will stand, or whether it will be a toddler that takes it down, or the rising tide.

We were surprised that the ones we did on Friday outlasted our stay at the beach, which included a mile long walk up and back to check out the work from the pros. I'd say these lasted four hours easily. The pros use special sand (almost a clay, really) and spray bottles filled with water and Elmer's glue.. Anyone can carve that stuff.

Let's see them work with the native stuff...