Our theme this year was Angry Birds.  Of course, their nest had to be empty - why else would they be angry?
 

We were happy to discover that, once formed, the eggs would hold together while being scooted across the sand.  That way, we could form them separately then group them together.
 

This is a photo of the entire scene - after we went up to the house for lunch, someone else decided to add a small wall in front of the eggs.
 

This was my first practice angry bird before my brothers arrived.
 

My oldest son, Seth (who was 11 years old on this trip) is getting better at sand sculpting.  This is the pig he made.

This has nothing to do with our sand sculptures, but we came across some interesting sea life this year.  These Blue Buttons are not jellyfish, but rather they are colony organisms attached to a float, similar to Man O' Wars.
 

We had a Super Mario Brothers theme this year. 
As usual, the artistic work is mostly from my brother,
Steven - I just helped him.

My brother Nathan and I made this Piranha Plant
pipe for my son.

One of my brothers couldn't make it to South Padre this year, so we did not do as much sand-building.  I decided on a sea serpent because it can easily be made to look impressive with minimal piling up of sand, which is the labor intensive part.
 

This is the head of the sea serpent.

This is the tail of the sea serpent.  My brother, Steven, made this part and helped with some touch-up details on the body.

This is another view of the sea serpent with one of Steven's trademark egg-like structures in the background.
 

We made an R2D2 for my son. 

 

Our first project this year was Wall-E scooping in a load of trash (sea shells). 
 

We later made another Wall-E, this time with Eve.

Wall-E and Eve from the back.

Another of our projects was the upper-half of a dragon flying up out of the sand.  Steven added a broken, capsized boat for good measure.
 

A top view of the dragon and boat.

A side view of the dragon and boat.

I am on the left, Nathan is behind the castle, and Steven is on the right.

A picture of the (almost) finished castle.  Unfortunately, we took too much sand out of one of the archways, and it fell down soon after.

The main focus of our efforts this year was on a sand castle my sons could play inside of - we named it "Castle Gann".

This is one of my side projects that year - the Roman Coliseum.