Rocks

We spent the beginning of the week in Batumi.  We went last fall, as sort of a last roadtrip hurrah before Gabriel's birth.  We didn't think we'd be up to a 6-hour drive with three kids in the car.  But as it turned out, that wasn't so bad.  Jeremy had some business in the area so we decided to make a trip of it.

On Tuesday he left at 9:30 a.m. and I was on my own with the kids until he returned 11 hours later.  We spent a good chunk of time, both in the morning and in the afternoon, sitting on the beach throwing rocks into the water.  Though Batumi's beach is not nearly as comfortable as my favorite sandy coast , it is still beach and there is something about those rocks.  Last time we went, we collected enough beach pebbles to filled a tall glass jar that now resides on our mantel.  We weren't in the market for more stones, but I can't resist collecting them and jumbling them around in my hand.  It reminds me of that rock tumbler I used to stare at in the Sears Christmas catalog (anyone remember that?) that we got in the mail growing up overseas.  I never did get the tumbler, but I always used to think how cool it was that it could turn an ordinary rock into something pretty.

Like the sea.

This kid could toss rocks into the water for hours.

In the afternoon the sun came out and Gabriel took a nap on the stones (major miracle, by the way).

Unfortunately, the baby and both his sisters were actually sick with a nasty cold the whole time, so we didn't have as much fun as we could have.  And since I got the plague the last time we were there, I feel  like we haven't quite gotten our money's worth from Batumi yet.  I'm hoping to return at the end of the summer.