Word of the day: Gnarly

Beyond the digging in the sand activity, the girls now have a new endeavor.

Boogie-Boarding.

And they have embraced it with a passion that only the young can get away with.

Not only have they adapted to the act of riding the waves. But they have also adopted the language of surfing. Because that makes perfect sense that little girls from the Southeast who don’t even live near the ocean/beach knows these things. 

So for the last few days we have heard phrases like “That wave was totally gnarly.” or “Hang ten, baby.”

I have a perfect stream of pictures which seem to capture the feelings of the day. Because while it looks like it’s all fun and games, things are not always what they seem.

Here is Younger Cousin #4 riding a wave in. She turned out to be the best at riding. Her mother (my sister) and I couldn’t decide if she just has really good timing or if it’s because she’s the lightest. 

Here is Older Cousin #3 catching a wave. 

That’s my girl in the background. Her timing was awful so she didn’t catch many waves. That and the fact that all these pictures were taken by my sister’s husband.

And why is that, you may ask?

Especially when you think about how much I love to take pictures.

Well, I couldn’t be bothered to get myself up from my comfy beach chair where I was reading great chick lit.

There are times that I just prefer to benefit from the hard work of others. Therefore, the subject matter of the majority of these pictures sway toward my sister’s family, not mine. 

Anyway, here is Cousin #3 smack dab in the middle of the wave. 

Notice the string she has in her mouth–which doesn’t come out the whole time she’s on the board.

But wait . . . what’s that in front of her?

It appears to be her sister. 

“Hey girlfriend, what’s up?”

“Hey, you just ran me over with your boogie board.”

“You totally messed up my ride on that gnarly wave.”

Ah, the joys of sisterly love. I like to imagine that about 30 years ago, on this exact same beach, my own sister and I had a similar encounter.

Except we didn’t have boogie boards because our mother was too cheap to by them.

We would have been body surfing. 

Now talk about hard core.

Because when we were done with body surfing, we usually looked something like this.

Only imagine more sand on the head. I’m talking big piles of sand just clumped up there.