How it happened...

D's flight was cancelled and he arrived a day late (no surprise there...). When he finally got here it was almost lunch time on Friday and the weather was beautiful! He suggested going to the beach, but I mentioned that we were doing that on Saturday... he went on and on about the weather and how great it was while I whined about how the day was half over and we wouldn't have long to hang out down there.... ultimately, I decided to toss the rules out and go. It took another hour to get everyone ready....

The plan was to walk to the pier then go get the towels and just enjoy the beach when most everyone else left around dinner time. Nola had other plans... there were SO many umbrellas, of which, she's [not surprisingly] terrified... and it was high tide, so that left very little sand to walk on... we decided to just get our stuff and stay put rather than walking.

We dug a few holes, chatted, shook off the towel, dug some more holes, shook off the towel...

...as we were watching the waves roll in we saw two tiny ghost crabs running around in front of us. When the water would get close, one would run inside his hole while the other one just crawled around trying to get away from it. D said something about how they needed their shells. I told him those crabs didn't have shells. He kept going on and on (and on and on) about how they needed shells... and I finally snapped that those weren't the type of crabs that had shells (!!!). Then he opened his hand to reveal a few shells he'd picked up and asked which one I thought they should have. Before I could further argue, he flipped one of shells and asked what I thought about it... underneath it, still in his hand, was my ring... Yada, yada, yada... goo, goo... I said yes!

I didn't really think this post through, but since so many people have asked for details, I thought I'd go ahead and post... We have quite a few ideas already ("we" meaning ME!) so I'm sure there will be lots more details to come!