Body surfing is a ton of fun

I think I would say that our family tradition is body surfing. Instilled in us from a young age by our Dad, who is still able to do it better than any of us, you go to the beach and that's what you do in the water. I have 5 brothers, and while some surf, some golf, some ski, some snowboard, some play basketball, the one thing we all do is body surf.

I think having our Dad be really good at it was what drove us to do it. You see it and you're like “that looks like a lot of fun, I want to do that”. Which is probably how it usually happens. Like Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. But not everything catches on. Other things have, like being a good person and good dad. But this post is about body surfing. (At this point I don't know if it's written as bodysurfing or body surfing, and have decided to just go with body surfing). But to give you an idea of the dedication to body surfing, my Dad just turned 79 and is out there still doing it!

I wasn't necessarily trying to get my daughter into it. I don't remember when I started body surfing. But she's 13 now. And I am assuming that the same thing happened. She saw us body surfing, thought “that looks fun af” (and easy since you don't need anything but a bathing suit!), and she's been giving it a go for a few years now, mixed in with sometimes boogie boarding.

But this past weekend, we made our first trip down the shore this summer. We got to my parents' shore house around 11:30am, chilled for a bit, then we were on the beach by 1pm. It was a bit crowded but as long as you can find a lane, you can body surf. We would go away from the people also.

My daughter does a lot to be proud of. She dances, plays basketball and softball, she's in musicals and sings solo at church. We were in the water body surfing for 3 hours in all (!!). She was catching waves. But there were two moments that had me beaming with pride :D  The first time, she brought the boogie board with her to potentially use at some point. We had two sessions of body surfing. The first one was like 2 hours. Then after that we needed a break so we went back to the seats and relaxed for a bit. When it was time to go back in, she pondered bringing the boogie board, and decided “no, I want to body surf!” Inside I was like “aww heck yeah!”

The second time, in our second session, she told me to stand and watch her. Typically you catch a wave, head right back out, maybe breathe for a second, then catch the next one! So this was against my will to not be actively catching waves :D But I watched as she perfectly caught a wave and rode it past where I was standing!!

Let me tell you about the sound I made! Luckily there was no one around, and it would have looked weird to them because a few days earlier, she had painted my fingernails red and blue, so this sound coming from a bearded slightly overweight man with red and blue fingernails… I don't know. But we high fived and I was jumping up and down! She was so proud of herself. And I was so proud of her :D