Nothing like a day at the beach

I finally finished my clinical placement on Friday! Though I had an amazing time working with other x-ray technologists at the hospital, I desperately wanted a break. My (short) summer has officially started and there's no better way to celebrate than going to the beach with your friends.
However, this was no ordinary beach expedition--we were at Awenda Provincial Park for Rudy & Elen's (check my last blog post for a background about them) Jack and Jill celebration :) 

Here's how the day went.

 
Awenda is approximately 2.5 hours away from Mississauga (our rendezvous point). I think it's a perfect distance--not too far & not too close. We left at 8-ish and got there at 10:30. Once we got there, we had to walk for about 20 minutes to get to the beach. It was a long walk but boy was it worth it. Look the perfect white sand coupled with the clear blue water. Thank God for the unbelievably beautiful weather; it was supposed to rain that day.  It was not too cold and not too hot with a nice breeze and clear blue skies. Lovely. 

There were a lot of vegetation on the sand with different wildflowers. 

Mike frisbee-ing

"DJT" wanted a picture so here it is, lol.

We were waiting for the other entourage to come so we used the time to get ready and explore. A whole lot of sunblock was applied, frisbees thrown and holes were dug to hide 'treasures' for the couple (I was distracted by other things to take pictures of them digging :( ).

The rest of the entourage arrived and we could finally eat! Here is the food we devoured that day. Chicken wings, fried chicken, rice and salad. Soooo good. I was too busy eating to take pictures of the actual food, but here are the boxes that contained them xD

The cookies were left out in the sun and they were sooooo good. The sun melted the chocolate and warmed up the cookies--tasted like it came right out of the oven. 

After lunch, they decided to bury my brother's legs in the sand. 

 Purty Megan :)

"Fabulous," he said as he did this, lol. 

 Elen & Rudy opening up their "treasure"

After lunch, the events got going. Remember when I mentioned the holes? After a whole lot of vague instructions, they finally found them! Inside were monetary gifts and Hawaiian props for them to wear, lol. I was distracted with catching crayfish and missed the part where they dug up the treasure (I should stop being so distracted eh?)

Rudy seems to like this outfit. Especially the coconut bra. It fits him well :P


 Group picture time :)

 The groom's side

 The bride's side (though Edo is is both pictures? xD)

It was also Jeff's (middle) birthday that day! He turned 23 :)

 Uh, this picture of Mike is self-explanatory, bahahah. I think I caught him adjusting the bra and smiling and the picture ended up like this....

 
Rudy's cute niece Jazzy. 

The rest of the day was pretty much playing in the water and doing whatever. We played dodgeball, volleyball, frisbee, etc. in the water for until sunset. I wanted to take pictures of us playing but the waves were pretty rough and I didn't want to risk waterlogging my camera. Rest assured, we had soooo much fun. You don't need pictures to prove it :)

 The umbrella matches Monik's purty dress :)

 Yummy cupcakes <3

The boys being boys.

 Photocred: Monik; this may look like a pile of something but it's actually our beautiful sandcastle.

 Photocred: Monik

 Photocred: Monik; Jimmy & Tasha looking awesome :)

Photocred: Monik

 Photocred: Monik. I gotta say that I love this shot, haha. 

 My brother (right) with Edo (left) wanted me to take a picture of them...

Tasha & Monik :)

We then decided to bury Brandon in sand. Here are the steps you should follow:

Step 1: Find a volunteer and cover him with sand.

Step 2: It is obligatory to add some curves. 

 

Step 3: Add abs and other "essentials". 

 
Step 4: Thank the volunteer for volunteering.

Step 5: Compliment the volunteer on his sparkly, Edward-like skin.

We played our last game of water dodgeball and ultimate frisbee. Then we dried off and proceeded to play Scribblish. It's such a fun mini-game. Everyone gets paper and a pencil. Then each person writes down a phrase. The paper is passed on to the person beside them and then that person attempts to draw out the phrase. The paper is passed again and the next person attempts to figure out what the person just drew. At the end, you get your original paper back and look through it to see what people had come up with. It was gut-wrenchingly HILARIOUS.

 

Collection of hilarious papers.
Some memorable ones: "Seagull eating fried chicken" turned into "Seagull arrests a black man." It's hard to describe how hilarious it was reading through all these papers--you gotta give it a try and find out for yourself.

 Sunset was looming and it marked the end of our super awesometastic day.

  

 Call me maybe?

 Photocred: Monik. Thanks for the picture! :) Please ignore my wardrobe as I was running out of clothes to wear...kept getting my clothes wet and ended up with unmatching clothes xD

 I wished that I brought my tripod and filter kit. I could've taken some long-exposure shots and it would've been gorgeous. Oh well, next time I hope! It was a good lesson of "shoot with what you got."
These were taken handheld.

Tyo (far left) didn't really get his feet off the ground, so this jumping shot semi-failed, lol. 

You guys are awesome! :)

What a perfect start to my summer. It was an amazing day with amazing people and I couldn't ask for more. Even though everyone got sunburned/tanned, I think it's safe to say that we all had a blast. As I'm writing this, all my muscles are sore from hours and hours of playing in the water; I'm also slightly sleep deprived because we got home at 12:30 am and I had to get up to go to church pretty early, but it was so worth it.
Most of all, I hope that Rudy & Elen enjoyed it as much as we did. Their big day is two weeks away and we are all so excited for them.  
Again, I wish them all the best with what's to come. God bless.

-e.m

p.s. If you actually read this blog post from start to finish, you are AWESOME. It was super long, so I hope it was worth your time!