The weather was absolutely perfect for the family beach week. There were some breezes but none of the ridiculous, umbrella destroying wind that we had last year and the year before. The ocean was calm every day except our last there, and there was a sandbar that created some nice waves.

I would say that the smile is evidence that Scott was enjoying the waves, but that maniacal grin is his default expression.

Some of us, though, still found something to fear.

McKenna informed me that this sand “looks like melanoma.” Thanks, Laura.

The cousins had plenty of beach playing time reinforcing Fort Kickass.

Looks like it’s about time to rinse the kids off in the pool.

Later that day, we returned to the beach for our family picture. Miraculously, we took one where all of the adults had their eyes open and the kids were not turned directly away from the camera before the sun had completely set.

I know what some of you are thinking: “Ryan, that beach is almost 100 feet from the beach house. How did you entice all of those people to walk downstairs and the dozens of steps to the beach?” We bribed them, of course, with fire and s’mores.

Michael even wore his nice death metal shirt for the occasion.

The s’mores were so good, that the next evening we decided to make s’more. Get it? GET IT?!!! There was a problem though – the leftover chocolate from the night before was absorbed into the chaos of the community refrigerator and assumed eaten. In place of the Hershey’s Bar, we substituted…

Four out of five people agreed that the M&M s’mores were outstanding. But, while delicious, these s’mores involved a slightly more complicated building process.

We need more heat to melt through the candy shell!

After several M&M’s were tragically lost to the sand, we found that smushing the roasted marshmallow on the graham cracker before adding the M&M’s was the way to go.

Must… concentrate… on… M&M… placement!

After constructing several M&M s’mores, we felt regret. Regret that we had not thought of using different candy on s’mores before. How awesome would a Reeses Cup s’more have been? Probably super freaking awesome. Maybe next year we’ll make s’more. GET IT?! Oh…