Tag Archives: beach

What I Learned On Vacation

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On vacation, I learned a few things.  Try, just try, I ask you, not to be impressed.

  1. Family time is precious, indeed. (In a related lesson, cousins sleeping in the same room after being apart for 6 months? No sleeping in. Ever.)
  2. Brushing your teeth in the morning as you listen the ocean lap the sandy shore? Blissful. (Hazelnut coffee after a Listerine rinse, however? Not so blissful.)
  3. Sheets that smell of the beach and have a bit more sand in them every day? The best! (Washing said sheets a couple of times each when you get home to rid them of said sand? Not so much.)
  4. Thank you God for inventing shrimp!  And, no, as it turns out, you can not over-shrimp yourself.  Just ask my family. (I think my new peachy-pink skin color suits me just fine, thankyouverymuch.)
  5. Being unplugged for the week is quite a feat. (If you don’t count the 2 iPads, 3 DS’s, and 4 iPod Touch’s that were necessary to allow the adults to enjoy adult conversation. We don’t count those, right?)
  6. Margaritas taste better when shared over a rousing game of Spades. (And apparently, my spades game improves with each new pour. Especially considering we narrowly averted a lost “nil” due to dealer error.  Let no more be said on the matter.)
  7. Moments like this make it worth every cent of the grocery bill that somehow triples when away from home:

    Footloose and fancy-free… just the way I like ‘em.

In other news, I went on vacation and all I got were these lousy mountains of laundry.

The majesty of these mountains escape me…

“Why, that’s only 5 loads!”, you may be tempted to say.  No, no, my friend.  That was simply as many loads as I could get into one shot without revealing the disaster zone that is my house right now. And, although I have no problem what-so-ever sharing pictures of my dirty unmentionables with you, I simply must draw the line at pictures of the dust bunnies and toy box that looks like it vomited all over the floor.  Of every. Single. Room.  I’m off in a cloud of turtle dust to vacuum some sand and ponder my lessons learned. Oh, yes indeedy.

That’s More Like It

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It’s been raining on and off since we arrived here in Not-So-Sunny-Florida.  We are, however, with a Nana and a Captain Ahab that we haven’t seen in a good long while;  and, so, we’ve been enjoying each other anyway.  Imagine. The Captain, however, is up to his same old tricks.  I haven’t  come up with a catchy name for the debacle that occurred this morning yet.  It could be called Watergate.  It really could.  But that’s already been taken.  Here’s the gist:

Ahab: “Let’s run the kids over to the beach to check the ocean before the day gets rolling.”

Me: (Naively) “That sounds like a great idea!”

The sun was sparkling across the water and peeking out just enough at 7:00 in the morning to give us hope for a decent day. We grabbed hold of that hope with a little more zeal than caution would warrant for the skies that were overhead. Can I just stop here a moment to tell you all, (all 8 of you), how poignant it is to watch my children walk the beach early in the morning with Captain Ahab?  That same daddy walked me and my brother when we were their age.  Oh, how the beach shell turns…

Aren’t Those Skies Talking?

Far longer than a “short beach run” later, we arrived home soaked to the bone.  You see, Captain Ahab thought it would be a mighty fine idea to walk the kids (including the littlest – Sweetgirl) all the way to the jetty.  And back. From where we started out, it was a good quarter-mile (or more) there, and then another good quarter-mile or more back.  That would have been great if we just had the two 9-year-old boys.  Alas… Halfway TO the jetty, Sweetgirl started telling us that her legs were tired of All The Walking.  Not a good sign.

Just about the time Ahab and I realized we should probably start heading back from the jetty, the skies decided to get angry.  We tried to shuffle the kids away, but dang it, there was a hot-pink mask washed ashore that was just Sweetgirl’s size, and a half-dead sea fan that begged to be brought back (despite the stench); not to mention the two turtle hatchling eggshells we found.  Oh, The Excitement!  Unfortunately, all of The Excitement made trying to hurry them along kind of like herding cats.  Only, harder.

Happily at the Jetty

All that to say, about 2 minutes into our 15 minute walk back, the skies opened up and rained on our beachy parade.  Here are a few things I heard from the lolly-gaggers before one of them needed to be picked up to keep the party moving along.

Sweetboy:  “We’ve walked 3 or 4 miles now, haven’t we Grampa?”

Sweetgirl: “My Eyes!  My Eyes are getting wet.  See, Grampa?”

Cousin:  “Can I just go ahead and jump in the ocean and go swimming?  I’m already wet!”

We did make it back. Wet, but happy to have enjoyed the adventure.  And to have made it back without getting struck by lightning. Obviously. As, I’m now sitting here in the comfort of the house telling you all about the latest adventure “abroad”.  Only, “abroad” is really just down South from up North.  Indeed.

Not Fit For a Princess In Training

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We did a little of this today:

And by “this”, I mean that we left the house at 9:00 am and didn’t get back until 5:30 pm. It was a full day of salty sea air, sunshine, and sand. Except for the 3 minutes where Sweetgirl went missing on a very crowded beach and I about lost my lunch at the one minute mark of the search (she was looking for “your umbrella, mama, and I couldn’t find it.”), it was a pretty great beach day.

Now, one would think that on the drive back home these two Sweetchildren of mine, and the two friends we had with us, would be wiped out.  One would be flat-out wrong.  After a day of fun in the sun, this is the conversation that took place in the car:

Sweetgirl:  “Bum Burp Bum Burp Bum Bum Burp”  (Sung to some I-Don’t-Have-A-Clue-What-Kind-Of-Tune.  Followed by squeals of laughter from the 2 nine-year old boys as well as the other little girl in the car.)

Mama:  “Sweetgirl, those aren’t words fit for a Lady.  Especially a lady in training to be a princess.”

Sweetboy:  “But they are if she’s a lady in ‘potty training’ mama, right?”

Oh, dear.  Yes indeed child.  Most unfortunately, yes, indeed.