My Beach Vacation

It's my personal belief that it's mandatory for me to spend a few days every summer at the beach. It probably comes from the fact that I spent a lot of time at the beach growing up, and my parents ended up with a cabin near Galveston, TX. When my kids were little, it was the cheapest vacation we could take! I love the mountains, but I must have my sand, surf, and shelling adventure each year.

The beach is messy and hot. It usually takes a few days after you've left to get the sand out of everything. Sometimes there's a little sunburn souvenir to take home as well. But, oh...to lie on the beach with nothing to do but people watch and talk; to hunt shells for an hour or so, to sit in shallow water and have waves wash over you, to read a book totally for fun....now that's the kind of therapy that should make psychiatry nervous.

We take our summer beach adventure each year with my husband's brother and his wife. My SIL and I have developed some routines/traditions that we don't allow anyone to mess with, and that we add to (we're into growth and improvement) each year.

This year we decided it was important for us to set up a comfortable/cute (if you don't have cute, what do you have?) little camp for ourselves. We have a colorful umbrella, colorful chairs, and we laid a floor with a floral tanning mat. I bought us a little flag that says "Beach Bums", but forgot it at home. We have plans next year to have a main camp and a satellite camp. Such is the nature of the things you think up to do when you are truly vacated from your real life!

My husband rented a pink golf cart one of the days. When I was a kid, it was cool to have a Dune Buggy..now it's golf carts on most beaches. We tooled around in our cart on the beach to see what we could see, but mostly we just sat on that beach. We went from pajamas to swimsuits and back. At night, we played dominoes. Our husbands went to buy supper...we didn't even get dressed for that. It was fabulous! I hope everyone out there has a wonderful getaway this year.