Last year, they adding in crabbing to the activities at the beach house. I was soooo bummed I missed out on learning how to crab. Theresa’s mom, Ann, has been promising to show me for years. Luckily Theresa has it down now and we bought enough nets for all of the kids to try it out!
It took Theresa and I awhile to get all of the nets set up for crabbing, but the kids with nets were catching crabs in no time! Henry was so excited he caught one, that he hauled it up and threw it on the dock. Which is when the (very smart!) crab made a run back to the water. I thought I had missed him completely in the photo…
But I managed to just catch him right before he went over the edge. I would say he’s a lucky crab, but it is quite possible that we caught him another 5 times. The ones that were too small keep coming back to nibble on some tasty chicken necks.
I mean, not the guys that were this small - they probably slipped right through the net. There were tiny crabs everywhere! It wasn’t hard to catch crabs, but it was challenging to catch the big ones.
They scouted out this location last year (after a few fails!) and it really was a great spot. The barges going by were super fun to watch! Though the boys and I didn’t realize that the water would rise up so high whenever they went by and were scrambling to get out of the way! The dock stays dry, but that’s about it. ;)
Anytime someone caught a crab in the first hour, they immediately had a crowd of kids trying to see the crab. It was a lot of excitement!
My two thought it was a super fun way to spend the morning.
Wallace was trying out all kinds of locations to catch crabs besides just the dock and he was doing pretty awesome. He made sure to call me over so I could document his catches as well! :)
The crabs were not as excited about getting their photo taken… Pretty sure he is threatening me with that claw!
Also, the claws were terribly hard to get off of the nets sometimes! They would get themselves so wrapped up and even if we were trying to free them to put them back in the water, they were not cooperative. Amazingly, no one got pinched!
One of the houses nearby had a dog that wandered over to say hi. She must have kids in the family because she was incredibly calm around all of them. She clearly just wanted all the head scratches the kids would give her. She didn’t have any tags, so we didn’t know her name - so Meredith just decided to call her Mandy. :)
Mandy was having a blast hanging with all of her new friends. I don’t know if she secretly wanted the chicken necks, but she didn’t try to eat all of them off the nets.
I managed to catch a few crabs, but I really excelled at catching hermit crabs! I think I was more excited about the hermit crabs than anyone else. What can I say - I had so many as a kid that they have happy memories associated with them!
We went earlier in the morning to try to avoid the heat of the day, but it didn’t last too long. It finally got hot enough that no one was excited about crabbing anymore. Thomas went and found the only shade to hang out while he drank his cold gatorade. So we called it quits for the morning and headed back to the house.
I mentioned the jewelry making and here’s the full kit all spread out on the table. I think I might be the only female that didn’t make something. But I did convince my eldest to make me a necklace (with a lot of help from Jenny!). Speaking of my eldest - I let him play minecraft occasionally since it was his vacation and he loved showing all of the other kids how to play. Though he insisted we start a new world so no one messed his up and it was aptly named The Beach House.
I also got to hang out with this girl! I was worried that I wouldn’t have any help with the youngest this year since my mom wasn’t there, but Jenny stepped in to help! Possibly because she is just that awesome or possibly she was missing her grand-baby? But either way, she was up for the challenge of learning how to tube feed her and keep an eye on her while we were doing non-toddler friendly activities. And there was only a slight miscommunication about how to feed her that was corrected once I realized what I said wrong!
Jenny even brought bubbles with her, so she was pretty much Natalie’s favorite person anyhow. :)
Though as you can probably tell from Thomas in the background - even the big kids love bubbles!
Once it got later in the fay, we headed back to try and catch more crabs. We need enough to make stuffed crab, so we were a little bit short… Everyone is well rested and ready to catch some more!
Thomas was pretty excited once he realized the beach chair provided some shade and was up for grabs! I don’t blame him - what’s more fun than crabbing in comfort??
Henry was struggling toward the end. This photo is mid-sentence of him saying “Crabbing is hard…” He did awesome though! :)
We finally caught enough to make stuffed crabs and headed back to the house. This was the least fun part - cooking them… :(
Jenny went and hid because she didn’t want to be a part of it. Theresa and I are not seasoned pros and there may have been a lot of shrieking involved when the crabs held on to the tongs we were trying to move them with. It’s stressful to be a murderer!
But the final stuffed crabs were totally worth it! Don’t they look delicious??
The kids pretty much all refused to try them, so more for the adults. :)