On vacation

This week I do everything I can to relish the last lazy moments of summer.

Last week I had my nails done in a "suitable for work" kind of polish.  This week I am on vacation so my nails, hair and makeup shall reflect it.

I have one little work meeting for lunch but otherwise, it's vacation baby.

We're going to the library.  We're going to the pool.  We're doing a little shopping (lots of freebies to be picked up).  We're reading.  We're playing cards and Clue and Yahtzee.

All too soon our schedule will change and we'll be back to the grind.

But this week we have this theme song!

The Sound of Sunshine (Michael Franti and Spearhead)

Beaches and Happiness

People who live near the beach just don't seem to get it.  They cannot understand why some of us drive so far and so long just to spend a week in the sun.  (Funny how they can take it for granted that they have a beach right next to them but cannot understand why it's a luxury to the rest of us.)

For the first several days at the beach we visited the one across the street from our condo.  It was a short walk to a very crowded beach.  Even in the evening the beach looked like this:

I realize that's not really crowded but imagine that same stretch of beach with rows of beach chairs (available for rent for just $40-50 per chair for a day) then a row or two of tents behind it and really, not much more than 5 feet between you and your neighbors.  Gosh, people were so loud that you could hardly even hear the ocean.

That is why I felt like I was in heaven when we reached a decision to go to the state park beach for our last day.  This is what greeted us during the busiest time on the beach, at 11 am:

And this is the beach at 2 pm when the crowd had cleared out:

We had the roar of the ocean.  We had a breeze (I swear it was much cooler at this beach simply because we didn't have a gazillion people around us!).  We had a relaxing long day at the beach.  Precisely what we drove all those miles to achieve.  And we had Twinkies.  Yup, good stuff.

Shark!!!!

I was stretched out on the beach trying to decide if I should just give in and take a nap or try to read for a while.  Suddenly one of my kids came out of the water and passed all the chairs/umbrellas to announce "Shark Mommy!!  Shark!"

And sure enough, there was a shark!  Everyone got out of the water and gawked at it like it was the most amazing thing ever. 

OK, so it probably was pretty amazing.  We've been to that beach a few times over the last ten years and we had never seen a shark. 

We all just stood there watching as it swam along the coast.  There were a couple of guys on paddleboards, smacking the paddle on the water to try to steer the shark back away from the beach.  I am a terrible judge of distance but I can say I was well out of the water and I could easily see the shark as he/she swam by.  Someone said it was around eight feet long but I have no idea if that person knew what he was talking about or not.

When my family went over to get sno-cones, they asked the girl that was working the stand if sharks have been a common thing this year.  She said they were not; she thought there had been one at the start of summer but this was the first since then.

Sooo, my kids got a nice cool little memory out of their trip to the beach.  They actually got to see a shark swim right past them.


Sorry, no pics.  The zoom on my camera isn't that fabulous and seriously, do you think I wanted to look that much like a tourist? 

Vacation all I ever wanted!

It goes without saying that I love my job.  However, when the year winds down and the days are hot and full of sunshine, I am absolutely ready for summer vacation.  At the end of May and beginning of June I have my list of things to do.  Might as well share.  Perhaps making it public will mean that it happens, right?

Home projects:

• Build those shelves I mentioned back in February
• Build the benches to go with the rustic farmhouse table we built in April.
• Sand and paint the kitchen chairs to match the table and benches we built
• Build the two walls to make the bedroom/storm-room in the basement
• Clean/organize/purge the basement
• Paint the laundry room, upstairs hallway and maybe part of the basement
• (Clean out the garage!)

Projects with the kids:

• Paint the desk chair--turquoise!!!
• Paint their name signs, an unfinished project from last summer
• Find a vet's office or animal rescue spot for my youngest to volunteer at a few times this summer
• Bake up a freezer full of breakfast treats for next school year!  English muffins, bagels and kuchens would be nice
• Work in the garden.  We really want to have more fresh vegetables and berries.
• (Build a playhouse/shed)
• (Build a campsite down in the woods perhaps looking into the cost of some canvas shading that would provide some measure of tick protection too)

Fun times:

• Swimming.  Lots and lots of swimming!
• Short road trips.  Right now I'm looking at trips to 3 or 4 nearby "big" cities for a few days at a time.  In three of those cities we have friends we can hang out with rather than have to stay in hotels. 
• Many trips to the library/long afternoons reading
• Take in a few baseball games.  Baseball was a huge part of my life when I a kid; I feel it should be part of theirs too. 

That looks like a pretty good list to get us started!