It had been a very long while since we last met with the Aws.

Yeva had been unwell and we had been busy too. But we decided that the children should get together after their long break from each other. We went to Castle Beach and all the kids got down to business. Some how, they all knew what to do with the spades, the pail and the sand.

Just enjoy the pictures!

Initially, Cheryl was appropriately dressed with singlet and shorts but she got too comfortable and decided to sit on the sand and I had not brought along a fresh change of clothes so our little girl had to play in the sand with her diapers. We decided to keep her singlet on for modesty reasons.

But the kids had so much fun, we should do this again!

Cheryl and Daddy building sand castle

Daddy decided that a good day like this should not go to waste so we went to the beach with the new sand castle building tools that I got for Cheryl.

As you can see, Cheryl had a great time. Daddy also had fun using the tools. It is not easy building and moulding the sand castle but given time and practice, (which means there will be more trips to the beach) I am sure Daddy's architectural skills will improve!

When we first got there, Cheryl didn't like the feel of sand at all but it was only for a moment before she got used to it. In fact she got so comfortable, she was sitting on the sand!

We all had a wonderful time there though it was only a short 2 hours. Cheryl was exhausted and fell asleep in the 15 min ride home; re-charging for part 2 of the day where we went to Baby Heidi's full month celebration.

Here are some shots I managed to take of Cheryl and Lucas.

It is definitely a "love-hate" relationship! One moment, they want to share toys and food, the next, they want to get away from each other. Lucas is definitely very possessive of his Bob and Digger and I even entertained this thought of bringing toys out in the future for Cheryl. (hmm.. then again, this is not really something I want to cultivate.)

This year, the staff retreat was a departure from our previous years because we had to gather at East Coast Beach early in the morning.

Some of us were really excited while there were others who weren't as enthusiastic. We spent the whole morning at the beach building sand castles and thereafter, adjorned for lunch at some country club.

By the time we were done on the beach, we were already exhausted from the heat and hunger!

As you can see, I am not particularly keen... I am not a "sun-person" and will definitely melt if I stay too long in the heat. I was pretty upset as I was not really dressed for the occasion; should have gone in slippers and shorts. But thankful, the stylo sun glasses Aunt Rina gave me came in handy.

Aunt Caroline and Rina hard at work building their sand castle. See the tools that Aunt Caroline was so seriously inspecting, I bought a set for Cheryl too. I was thinking that the tools would really be useful when Zinnia, Bernie, Yeva and Cheryl come to the beach.

These pictures were taken after the sweating under the sun. Aunt Kavita and Hafizah enjoying their little chat while I was happily looking at some of the shots that Aunt Rina took of us.

That is the group I was with and our sand castle did not look really good compared to the rest. At least we tried. Honestly, there was a sense of satisfaction because we created something out of nothing.