December 22: Early Settlers

Most of the family went to a living history museum in St. Augustine, the first European settlement on the continent.

I came away with a renewed sense of just how easy my life is, by comparison. The earliest settlers would have had to produce everything from scratch. They made their own concrete, by taking shells and pounding them down to powder. Imagine the effort: locate the shells (perhaps eat the sea life inside), then pound with a stick for hours. And we thought it was challenging to make a concrete foundation using powdered concrete in a bag that simply required mixing. Drilling holes with a wooden dowel and some string. Aah! The tediousness!

Also, how lovely to live in a time and place where it is possible to simply purchase what is needed. It may be stressful, at times, to want to buy more than there is money for, but since nails are for sale, and clothes are for sale, and food is for sale, all of those do not have to be created out of the rough materials in the location. How much more challenging these last few years would have been if we had had to whittle wooden nails and tan deer skins (assuming we could shoot the deer first). Or go to gather foods, every day for every meal.

I'll take my freezer, even if a freezer sometimes fails, thank you.

After that small dose of 500 year back reality, the family enjoyed an afternoon on the beach.

I am not really a beach person (the sun assaults my skin; the sand assaults my skin; the wind and the salt water assaults my skin), but this was a pleasant few hours. Caleb slept through it, but we laughed and laughed at the boys.

Abraham, especially, was enthusiastic. He pretended to be a pirate, finding treasure, and he brought shell after shell up, laughing a theatrical "evil" laugh.

Joe played happily.

The sand was not good for superb sand castles, but all sand is good for digging.

The older boys flew kites.

Incredibly, Isaiah once let his go, but ran down the almost deserted beach and managed to catch it!

(Thank you to my sister-in-law for all these lovely photos!)