Jelly Belly

We just returned from our annual trip to Galveston.

 After we had been there for two hours, Joe and I looked at each other and said, "We should've just stayed home."  It's not that the trip was terrible.  At least the cops weren't called on us this time....but we suffered one little annoyance after another.

As soon as we got checked into our hotel, the kids were ready to hit the beach.   So, even though it was almost 7 pm, we headed out.  Last year, Noah wouldn't go into the water.  This year he jumped right in.  Lauren, Eli, and Cousin B waded out waist deep, and Joe and I were knee deep with Lela and Noah.  The beach wasn't very crowded.  We figured that was because of the time.  It wasn't.

The beach was nearly vacant because of these little guys:

After about ten minutes in the water, we heard Eli and Cousin B screaming.  They'd been introduced to jellyfish the hard way.  Cousin B was stung on her wrist.  Eli got it on the right side of his stomach.  Cousin B was sobbing.  Eli was howling his best impersonation of a whale mating call.  They say that the best thing for jellyfish stings is urine.  Unfortunately for Eli and B, Joe couldn't just whip it out and pee on them because we already have a history with the Galveston police.  Instead, Joe took the other kids back to our hotel, and my sis-in-law and I drove to a nearby pharmacy with B and Eli.  I got to wait in the car with the kids.  Lucky me.  And of course, by the time we got something to treat the stings, it was over, and neither of them needed the remedy.  

And Eli refused to even think about going to the beach again.

And that, my friends, was only the beginning.