I Have Not Been Eaten By A Shark...(But It Was A Close Call)

Missed me?

You did, didn't you!! Well...I have returned.

Well...to be honest...I never left. But my COMPUTER did. It was being held for ransom at Best Buy for a WHOLE WEEK while they cleaned and did a maintenance check on it after it up and crashed last Tuesday.

It was the LONGEST week of my life.

There are bills due that I haven't paid. I'm not even sure how much money is in my account! There were over 100 e-mails to wade through, and an equally endless amount of blog posts to catch up on. And worst of all...I had to POSTPONE my Summer School Lesson Plans for TWO WHOLE WEEKS because of it.

I want to cry.

There are so many things I have to post...my first week of Summer School Lessons...several recipes...and pictures and commentary on Josephs 5th grade graduation, birthday, and some new family styles...

So please be patient while I catch up...

Incidentally, today was the first day of the first official week of Summer vacation, and we decided to start things off right with a trip to the beach with our good friends, the Marlowes, who will be vacating the Jungle soon for the Frigid Far North. While at the beach, we boogie-boarded and made sand castles, buried Brigham and snorkeled...ya' know...all the usual Jungle Beach Fun. As we were splashing and swimming in our tropical waters, a lifeguard came by on his ATV and blew his whistle at us to get out of the water. We obliged, but were kinda confused. We didn't get to ask the reason because he continued down the beach, whistling at people to vacate the water as he went. Several feet behind him, another lifeguard came walking along the shore, followed by a few fellow beach-goers. They were all looking out to sea. We followed their gaze...and guess what?

Not twenty feet of shore was a 6-7 foot shark, slowly cruising up the shoreline. His fin crested the water twice, but he mostly looked like a dark grey shadow smoothly cutting through the water. Now...twenty feet from the beach is only about 4-to-6-foot-deep waters...my big kids can still stand on parts of it...

...in fact, just 15 minutes before, we HAD been standing out there trying to catch little waves on our boogie boards. We had given up and come up the shallower water to play with the toddlers just 5 minutes before the lifeguard whistled us out.

Anyway...the shark continued up the coast, and we all "ooohhhed" and "aaahhhed" and pointed...and as soon as the walking lifeguard passed us, we got back in the water. Now - I don't know what type of shark it was...I certainly wasn't going to swim out there and find out...it might have been a harmless nurse shark. But it was BIG...and I thought...

"WOW!! I've seen sharks in aquariums and zoos, and I've even had what I think was a small nurse shark (maybe a foot in length) swim through my legs once a little further up the coast. But I've never seen a grown-up shark THIS CLOSE in the wild...

Kind of inspiring.

Kind of thought-provoking.

Kind of SCARY.

Kind of just another day in the Jungle...

- Shannan