Beach Bums

I am not a beach person, let me make that very clear. I sunburn really fast, never tan, and bright sunlight gives me a headache.

However, William and I went to the beach yesterday and had a lovely time. A friend of mine who has a son the same age as William has a beach house down in Manahawken (ok, it's her mom's, but close enough). They were going to be down there for a week or two, and since JC and Rachel are off at camp this week, we thought it would be a nice diversion for William to go down and visit for a day.

We had a lovely time. William and I got there about 11am (it's an hour & 45 minutes from here), so we put suits on the kids and let them swim and splash in the little aboveground pool at the house while we drank iced coffee and sat in the shade. Then we went and got lunch at a bar (hey, it had kid-friendly food!) in our swimsuits. I could do this beach-living thing!

Then the beach. We managed to forget beach chairs, but remember the umbrella. I don't think we schlepped too much more than we needed to, and we did bring a wagon. We had really good parking karma, and it wasn't a long walk. And the beach had a lot of people but wasn't really crowded, so it was easy to find a nice spot to spread the towels. And it was lovely. I got to sit in the shade of the umbrella, there was a nice breeze so it wasn't too hot, and the ocean was cold enough William really only wanted to get his feet wet. So the kids wave-hopped, dug in the sand, rolled in the sand, got wet and rolled in the sand some more... and I sat in the shade and talked to my friend and helped dig for the castle. I still got sunburned, even with SPF 50, but not badly.

Back to the house, showered the sand off the kids, and then went for a ride in their speedboat. I'm really not a boat person either, but it was fun (if a little windy) to see the bay and the kite surfers. We tried to pull into a restaurant for dinner, but the kids didn't have shoes and they wouldn't even let us on the deck without them. So we had to go back to the house and then to dinner. Then William and I drove home - they offered that we could stay the night, but since we're off to Florida next week, I was feeling a little time crunched.

Have I accomplished anything today? Not much!