Winter at the beach.

After we'd dropped Bryce off at home my mom had an idea to go to the beach to collect shells! Now, it's the middle of winter here and we'd just come out of 24 hours of solid rain (I kid you not, it didn't stop once!), so I was a little surprised at the suggestion, but we headed out anyway and ended up at St. James beach in - well, St. James!

I haven't been to St. James for ages probably since I was a child but I have to say, it was very pleasant.

Being the middle of June it was quiet, a couple of walkers coming and going and I discovered that there are some lovely rock pools there that I had forgotten about. And most importantly - no wind!

We bundled ourselves up and went down onto the beach to find a few large patches of shells all around the beach. A lot of it were broken pieces but there were also lots of really pretty whole ones.

And so the search began. We'd forgotten to bring along a bucket or bag or something to put them in, so we ended up with pockets and pockets full of them!

Before long we were shoeless:

and a little while after that 1 of us was pantsless! May I remind you it's mid-winter here?! She did manage to keep her ballet tutu on (under her tracksuit she had a leotart and tutu!!).

How she wasn't freezing I do not know but her hands were actually quite warm the whole time.

We ambled along picking up shells and eventually ended up at a huge rock pool with lots of little crevices in between. We found lots of "curly-wurly's" and periwinkle shells there and even a lonesome starfish.

Niave was on her own mission (hey, what else is new?!) stacking up mussel shells on a rock!

This kept her busy for ages - we had visions of having to bring the whole lot back with us but fortunately she only brought 1 momento! Until she finally fell, and landed face-first in the water!

It had to happen and frankly I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner!

Well, it was time to go anyway as the sun was well and truly gone by then, so we dripped back to the car for a change of clothes and set off to find fish and chips for supper. We did find some, at a lovely take-away at Kalk Bay harbour called "The Lucky Fish (and chips)".

We got home with some sandy, sticky and sleepy children who are now safely and snugly snoozing in their beds!

And not long after we arrived home it started to rain - again.