MISTY'S MORNINGS

Sometimes I have to pinch myself that where we live, day after day, is actually a vacation destination for many people who come from far away to spend a weekend on the beach. They may have saved money for months to afford a few days splashing around in the waves and relaxing on the san that makes up our neighborhood. I feel such gratitude that I can zip down the beach road on a whim, as we did yesterday, with less than two hours to spare; we simply needed to swim in the sea. It was almost 100 degrees outside and the sun gleamed in a brilliant blue sky. So off we went, while Kai was at camp, to the beach.  The older two boys swam gleefully as I read Bread and Wine and dreamed of delicious meals to make my sun-kissed family for dinner. At one point I looked up and snapped this photo of my view. Then I pinched myself. This really is our home , our daily vacation spot, the place my boys have now lived for longer than anywhere else in their lives. We are living this beachy ...

As you know from my last post ~ 40 Things I Learned While 40 ~ I am now 41 and as of Monday, so is my husband.  (I love that I can say I married a younger man.) I wonder what he would list as his 40 things he learned while 40? Sounds like a good question for our next date night. Hopefully that will happen before we are both 42! Back on my birthday, while the hint of summer was still heavy in the air, we took our coffee and two chairs to the beach just down the road.  There we sat, ignoring the to-do lists and pressing demands of his work, and remembered what we are really celebrating with each passing year  ~  our personal relationships.  Without relationships our work would be meaningless, our to-do lists pointless drudgery. We held hands and watched the birds sailing high then streaking downward in search of their own breakfast.  The sun climbed before us and the still calm water gleamed in pink and silver tones. We talked about...

Visiting California as a middle-schooler I was surprised to hear that many locals rarely went to the beach.  When you live close to it you aren't as thrilled by it as the tourists I supposed.  Back then, while growing up in landlocked North Dakota, I never imagined I'd wind up living four miles from a tourist destination beach like we do now and I can see how one slips into "been there done that mode". Between October and April it is a rare occasion that I venture to the water's edge.  It's too cold, too windy, too chilly, too much effort.  May brings a renewed vigor for beach days but by August it has become old hat. While lying back in my beach chair one day observing my boys, the waves and the beauty of it all I thought of my trips to California and how precious they were to me then.  Scanning the visiting beach families, obvious by their flaming red sunburned shoulders or Quebec license plates in the parking lots, I realized that many...

PRETTY RW and ZJ were born twelve months and two days apart.  It was the most amazing déjà-vu I have ever had ~ returning to the same hospital ward, the same nurses attending, the same doctor, at the same time of year, to the same overwhelming memories of surgery and recovery and new life and heart-smacking love. It was the best. It seems so appropriate that every  February we get to celebrate Valentine's Day and the next day the birth of our firstborn son.  Two days later we celebrate the birth of our second son (and three months later the birth of our third). February is certainly a love ly month for us.  On RW's birthday we surprised the boys by taking them on a whale-watching boat ride on the ocean.  It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, unseasonably warm and perfectly calm for a day on the water.  We saw small boats, naval ships, Coast Guard cruisers, gigantic cargo ships (clearly from China), lighthouses, beautiful h...

1. Yesterday RW and I drove a friend's son home from school.   They live in a house on the beach.  It was a wildly windy day but the sun was shining and since we were there, we decided to go get our toes wet.   2. We found some shells and snapped photos of ourselves looking like giants with the sun at our backs and our shadows extending toward the sea. 3. A while back a blogger I enjoy mentioned that she made a promise to herself to get outdoors at least once everyday. I know for a fact that my state of mind improves tremendously when I have the chance to hear the birds chirping, feel the breeze in my hair, let the sunshine kiss my skin.  As you can see by the expressions on our faces, our spirits were high despite the chilly air. We both felt refreshed even though our throats are still sore and we have not fully recovered from our sick week now two weeks ago. 4. I am still not used to the fact that we live on the very edge of the s...

trust    /trəst/ Noun Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. Verb Believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of. Synonyms noun .   confidence - faith - credit - reliance - belief verb .   believe - confide - rely - credit - hope - entrust I know it's cliché to include the dictionary definition of a word in one's essay but there it is.  Trust defined by Google: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something .  And since the most common mantra in my head (and out of my mouth) of late has been Trust The Process , the word lifted itself to the top of the list of words I was debating for directing my soul in 2013. 2011's word was Enough.  I had had enough of the physical clutter and mental noise in my life and I set about to tackle it. It worked.  From my pantry shelves to my Pa...

Have a wonderful, restorative weekend.

photo courtesy of my cousin Ann Participating in The August Break

::  I Love It  :: Week 48 Photo Gallery Prompt   The first beach outing of the season (and my red Rimmel nail polish !) is what I am loving these days.  If you're like me, you'd prefer to keep this mild, not-too-hot-not-too-cold weather all summer long.  Alas, it will not last and soon even a trip like this to the ocean will leave me sweaty, sunburned and sleepy .   For now, though, nothing beats an isolated afternoon visit to the sun-warmed sand , the water yet too sharp to swim in, watching little boys fling shovels-full into the air and seeing sea birds nosedive for unseen snacks underwater.  It may even induce some trashy novel reading (not by me of course) but I may have seen other women paging eagerly through historical romance novels such as Outlander by Diana Gabaldon for the tenth time. ..