Life's a Beach...and then you marry one.

After our flights from Narita to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Phuket, we were ready for some serious relaxation time! Here's our little piece of paradise: Kata Beach. We also lovingly called this "Little Stockholm" due to all the Swedes we met there. Here you could rent a chair and umbrella for $3/day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata_Noi_Beach




If I could distill our whole vacation into one photo, this would be it:




We made it to the beach almost every day. Mia quickly became enamoured by the local beach dogs. She called them her "beachcombers." Every morning she woke up and said, "Let's go find a beachcomber!", and we always did.

This particular beachcomber was named "Owl" by Mia. Mia saved table scraps galore for this little friend.




We met another family from Seattle and their girl, Michelle, became a fast friend of Mia's. On the 2nd day of their meeting, Michelle announced, "technically, we are good friends now." Michelle is a super-bright, uber-mature seven year old. Mia and Michelle swam together for hours at a time, we had to beg them to come in for meals.

Here's another typical beach scene of ours, Aaron building castles with the kids.

Without fail at 10am, Rhett would fall asleep on his little rubber raft when out in the water with Aaron. Aaron would pull him ashore and let him finish out his morning nap (thus allowing Aaron some precious reading time, albeit not enough). Rhett liked to tuck his hands and feet into the raft compartments that were filled with warm water.

But soon enough, it was time to get playing on the beach again...