to the beach AGAIN?

Why yes, don't mind if I do. Abigail stopped over yesterday. She has a full-time job doing bookkeeping/accounting in the big city, and also a weekend job giving away samples at a warehouse club store. Her car is basically a hunk of junk, so she is trying to rack up the work hours and save for another one. Anyway, she hasn't had much time off at all, so she took this weekend off. So....knowing that Emily had a few days off too, a great plan started in motion, and we are all going to the beach, even Paul! Well, sadly Aaron and Mali are working. And Benjamin has plans....so I think 13 of the kids will be going.

This time I am hoping to remember the thermos of hot coffee, since I left it home last time. We got in the van to start the hour and half journey home, and what??? No coffee??rats, home on the kitchen table. rrr.

I partly hate the beach, because I hate sand. I don't mind walking in it, or having them play in it, and I even play in it too...but sandy hands eating things, blah! There seems to be extra gravity on the beach too. Even when I am super careful, everything eaten has that extra crunch that is distinctive to sand. blah. But the sunshine and the water and the way the kids play so contentedly....it is worth it.

The place we are going today is right down the beach from the camp my parents owned when I was growing up. I literally spent every summer of my life up there from the time I was a baby, except for the trips to the mountains. So going there fills me with a deep sense of familiarity, of longing for my parents and my brother Billy...(Billy was a few years older than me, I always played with him as a child and hung around with him as a teenager...he LOVED the beach...when we had the camp, he would sometimes take his sleeping bag down to the beach and sleep under the stars....)I don't know if it is because I spent my dreamy-head-in-the-cloud teenage years there or what, but that beach seems like it is part of me, it is in my blood. One of my fondest memories was waking during the night one night, and sneaking down to the beach to just sit and watch the moon shining on the waves....and my mother joining me...she didn't chew me out at all, we just sat there together and enjoyed it....

So...now to get up out of my chair where I am enjoying my coffee, and gather the towels from the dryer and make sure they all have their suits and brush hair and feed them breakfast and remember my coffee....