Beach Bums

The kids are finishing up their second week of fall break. As luck would have it (or as the calendar worked out) I was able to take off all of last week to spend with everyone. As much as I wanted to spend time with my family, I think I wanted even more to catch up. I was so tired of feeling overwhelmed. So my plans for the week were to hang out with the kids and Jeff, to play outside every day, to spend two days away on a mini-vacay, to do lots of shopping and cooking and eat wonderful meals and fully stock the freezer with premade meals, to really clean the house, and to spend two half days working so I wouldn't feel like I was drowning when I went back to work. And I have to admit, I honestly believed that could all happen. (I have a long history of seriously overestimating the amount of things I can cram into a small window of time. But in my defense, I am really good at cramming lots of things into small windows of time.)

It wasn't long, though, before I realized my plans were doomed. It wasn't going to happen. And on a certain level I was pretty frustrated and upset. I couldn't figure out how I could possibly survive the rest of the fall without cramming all of that into a week. But I didn't want to stop playing outside with my kids. Or taking naps. (Yes. Naps. Glorious naps!) Or cooking normal amounts of food.

And it turns out as much as I thought I needed to do stuff, what I really needed was to rest. This week I've been a whole new person because I did spend time playing with the kids and reading books and watching movies. And it turns out it's great that I didn't stock the freezer because it's looking a bit iffy on whether we'll keep power all weekend. And we got to go to Wrightsville Beach twice, and spend a day in Myrtle Beach, and another day in Sunset Beach. Not only were the beach days nice (how many people get four beach days at three different beaches on a staycation?), but who knows when we'll be able to go back to the beaches because a significant amount of beach erosion is predicted this weekend. As for getting the house clean, it looks like I will have all day Saturday indoors to get it done, so that will take care of itself as well. So the lesson learned is...procrastination pays! Or something like that.

But on to the pictures.

We had gorgeous weather for Wrightsville Beach, part 1.

Then it was on to Myrtle Beach, where we spent most of our time exploring the boardwalk.

 

We actually went to Myrtle Beach because oldest girl child wanted to ride the Skywheel, and it turned out to be closed. Doh.

Since John Candy wasn't around to break us into Wally World the Skywheel, we settled on spending an afternoon in an arcade. We all went crazy with the quarters and had a ton of fun. And brought home a ton of stuffed animals.

We did actually spend a little time at the beach at Myrtle Beach.

And then it was on to Sunset Beach. The kids didn't even want to go to the beach - we had to drag them out to the sand. But then they remembered the awesome part about Sunset Beach is we can go out past the breakers and go swimming, and then, of course, they wouldn't come in from the water. But the real highlight of Sunset Beach, as always, was playing the Game of Life.

Our week ended with a second trip to Wrightsville Beach. There was a storm passing offshore and we found relatively big waves. Natalia liked watching all the surfers. I had to work pretty hard to keep Leon from swimming out and joining them.

All told, it was a great week, even if it's not what I had planned. And I'm so glad I went with the change in plans.

Beach Escape

I'm guilty of  being overly optimistic. It makes me a bit of an odd duck in the very serious, analytical world of auditing (as though I wasn't an odd duck there in any other way). But I do believe that there is usually good in everything, and I definitely experienced that on Sunday morning.

For the past few months, I've had a lot of trouble sleeping. I've blamed the lack of sleep on the kids and the dogs, and while they certainly don't help, I know I am to blame. (I am starting to figure out why I'm not sleeping, and that's a whole other topic.) I fall asleep without any problem, but I wake up for the day really early. Sometimes as early as 4:30.

On Sunday morning I woke up at 5:40 to a completely quiet house. No kids tiptoeing around and slamming toilet lids, no doggies pacing to go outside. It was nice. But I was also wide awake and stir crazy. The never ending to do list in my brain was screaming at me to stop wasting time. But what could I possibly do without waking everyone up? Then it occurred to me - I could sneak out for a walk. On the beach. 

I managed to get dressed and out of the house without anyone chasing madly after me. While I was driving to the beach it occurred to me that it was still not light out. I could actually watch a sunrise on the beach. It's a bucket list item that I've wanted to do for years, but I could never make myself plan to get up before 6am on the weekend for fun. That's just wrong. 

I was greeted by a beautiful, quiet beach.

 

I found a place to stash my flip flops and my water bottle, and I took off walking. I walked barefoot on the water's edge, and it was soothing. I was also lost in my thoughts. Thankfully, at one point I realized two girls were sitting on a blanket with their phones up recording something, and if not for them, I would've completely missed the sunrise.  

 

This little guy did not want to miss sunrise either. 

 

I was amazed at how quickly the sun came up, and I'm so glad I got to see it. 

 

And, yes, this experience probably just reinforced my optimism. But is that really all bad?