low tide

It's been a while since we've had Saturdays free to relax...but with soccer season finally behind us (at least until Fall) we thought this past Saturday the perfect opportunity to head out to the beach to go tide pooling. It was low tide, after all.

The girls LOVE tide pooling.
Jojo loves hunting for hermit crabs...and is surprisingly NOT afraid of them. Even when they pop out of their shells in her hands!

Kela and Anna, however, are more the fishing type.

With their handy-dandy nets, they managed to catch quite a few small fishes in the little pools left by the receding tide.

The day really was beautiful!
Sunny but windy enough to not feel overly hot...perfect weather to relax and enjoy the beauty of Hawaii. :)

Here's a little lowly crab that I manged to snatch up.
It's funny...the hermit crabs here like to make a variety of things into homes. Besides little shells...rocks, bits of coral...anything they can get their little bodies into, they do!
It's really quite neat.

The challenge of it all, of course, is to keep Kaden from plunging head first into the water.
Mitch had to hold him the entire time...while Kaden was literally fighting to get away all the while.

Remember what I said about Jolee and her fascination with little hermit crabs?

Here's the bounty.
The spotted sand crab?
I caught that one.
Anna managed to catch 7 or so fish. Kela caught some, too...but not sure how many.
All the hermit crabs were caught by our Jojo.
And fyi...all the tiny little "rocks" on the bottom are actually tiny little hermit crabs.

Yeah, Kaden wasn't too happy about not being able to play with the bucket of fish & crabs.
Boys...



So, after an hour or so of fishing and crab hunting...it was time to release their catch back into the ocean. Kela did the honors.

All in all, a great afternoon!
By this time, Jojo was a bit too tired and hungry to pose for the camera...

Yay for family outings!
And yay for such a beautiful place to call home!