Lost and Found in Bowentown

On our final night of our Spring Break vacation, we settled in Waihi Beach at the Bowentown Beach Holiday Park.  We thought we might stay two nights, but the clerk at the desk told us that the weather would be "turning to custard" the next day.  We had had absolutely AMAZING weather up to that point of our trip.  It had been so nice, for so many days, that I was superstitious about even talking about the nice weather we had enjoyed, for fear of jinxing us before our vacation was through!  It is cloudy and rainy quite a bit where we live in Palmerston, so to have so many consecutive days of warm sunshine had been heavenly.

We found another nice grassy spot, close to the beach:

No sooner had we set up camp than our kids donned their togs and headed to the beach.  These next pictures show the view looking down on our beach area from the edge of our camp spot:

We had a very large area to play in, a cove of sorts, surrounded by cliffs and rocks.  Since the tide came all the way to the cliffs when it was high, there were great shells to be found, tide pools to explore, and the sand was perfect for digging and molding during low tide.

I snapped this cute pic of Emily playing on the log...

...then settled down next to Steve to relax for a bit.  I took a few more pics while we sat and chatted about our wonderful trip and beautiful surroundings.

After a few moments, I glanced over to where Emily had been playing on the log, and she wasn't there anymore.  I looked around from my seat and didn't see her anywhere in the area where the other kids were playing.  With my camera still in hand, we got up and started to search the area.  It's been a long time since Emily has really wandered far away, but being so close to the ocean, we were still worried.

We called out Emily's name with no response.  Finally, Julia cried, "I see her!"  I rushed over to where Julia was standing, and it took me a moment to register what she had seen.  

Do you see Em's cute little arms and hands?  She had crawled into a cave, and we think she was planning to hibernate!  She was pretty grumpy when Steve climbed in to retrieve her, foiling her plan.

She soon got busy playing in the sand again, and seemed to forget the whole incident (although we had to keep a closer eye on her!).

Later that evening, we made dinner while the kids played a little cricket on the grass:

Steve is all smiles in the photo, but in actuality, he was pretty sick.  He had been battling a fever since the previous night, his throat was very sore, and he had big spots on his tonsils.  He was quite certain that it was strep throat, but despite feeling ill and weak, he still worked hard to help make the end of our vacation memorable.  I'm so grateful for him.

The next morning, Rachel snapped this photo of our cove where we had played the day before.  Emily was confused... "Where my sand go?"

We loaded up the van and began our journey home.  Luke and Landon had both caught a cold, and Steve's fever was so high that his body heat saturated the whole front seat of our van.  Poor guy!  As miserable as Steve felt, we were both so grateful that most of our vacation had gone off without a hitch.  I drove often to allow Steve to rest.  It doesn't happen often, but sometimes even the doctor becomes the patient.