Simple Joys: Family Time At The Beach

My husband grew up in a bayshore town.  So, during our visit to Nana and Granddad's house this past week we had to make a trip to the town beach and then to a nearby ocean beach as well.  W has been very excited about going to the beach since I gave him the Gerda Muller Summer book last week.  This photo only added to his excitement, though I had to prepare him that the beaches we were visiting would not have cows.


The town beach on the bayshore was a real treasure trove.  The waves in the bay are much more gentle than the ocean waves and W felt comfortable getting closer to the water there.  Also a creek flows into the bay at these beaches providing some comparatively still water for W to play in as well.  Oh how he loved it!

Looking inland at the creek bed.

A boy exploring the beach.

Of course a boy has to find a stick!

Throwing rocks and shells pieces into the water was a favorite beach activity.

W loved playing with rocks and shells in the calm creek water.

We found that the bayshore beach was teaming with shells, rocks, beach glass, drift wood, birds and sea creatures.  It was the perfect place for a nature walk.

I'd love to share a few of our favorite finds with you.

A Tiny crab that had washed up on the beach.

Driftwood

This horseshoe crab proved to be very interesting.  

We found it on it's back like this and flipped it over.

We found that it's back had quite a few snail shells attached to it.

It was still alive so Daddy put it further down on the beach and 

we eventually were able to watch it start to swim back into the water.

  

We thought a whole large clam shell was a pretty good find!

The beaches on the bayshore were much better for shell collecting than the ocean beaches.

Duck footprints in the sand. 

Birds on the Bayshore.

Later that day we made a trip to the ocean beach.  We found relatively few shells there, but I was able to find some beautiful shell fragments, rocks and some beautiful pieces of beach glass there  all of which had been worn down and had edges softened by the waves.  I loved how much more powerful those ocean waves seem as compared to those on the bay.  I found as I walked along the beach I would stop, and look at the ever changing nature of the beach.  As the waves would come in around my feet, and then go back out, they would scatter the bits of rocks and shells on the beach into new patterns.  

I loved looking at this piece of seaweed with the ocean foam still clinging to it.

W was more nervous about those strong ocean waves and preferred to stay further up on the beach, though he did ask me to take him down to wade in the water just as we were leaving.

W would occasionally come up close to the water 

and then joyfully run back as the waves came towards him.

Note the little sand soul patch he is sporting here!

He loved walking around the beach with his shovel and bucket.  

He filled the bucket with sand and rocks and shells 

which he would then dump out and ask me 

to get him some water from the ocean.  

He took the ocean water up to the dry sand and would spill it all out.  

We did this over and over and over again!

Unfortunately, our beach day was a bit on the chilly side, so there were no bathing suits and Daddy would not even take his shoes off to stick a big toe in the water 

(which was warmer than the air).

 In the car on the way home, W told us that the beach was "great fun"!

How I Recover from A Couple of Rough Days...

The past two days have been really rough ones for our family.  We live in a townhouse apartment and one of the major drawbacks is smelling everything from the unit next door.  It's currently vacant and being renovated.  Unfortunately, part of that process involved the heavy use of chemicals with fumes that made us sick.  Of course this had to happen on a 100 + degree day when my husband's car was at the shop being fixed. This meant that my husband was driving my car...and of course both of our car seats were in our respective cars.  So W and I were effectively stranded!

Somewhere in the afternoon I noticed W looked like he was about to fall over and then suddenly felt very dizzy and started smelling bad fumes.  We were getting ready to have friends over to go swimming so I grabbed all our pool stuff, dumped it on the front porch and high tailed up to the management office to report the issue.  Luckily they were really responsive and put out fans next door.  We swam with our friends who were wonderful to bring us cold water to drink as well.  After swimming, I was still feeling sick in our apartment, so we waited outside for  my husband to get home from work, talking to neighbors from the other apartment that was most affected by all of this.  The management company ended up having to send all of us to hotels for the night.  Today the smell is gone and we were able to come home, but talk about messing up our entire rhythm and shattering more than a few of my nerves!

Today started pretty well.  Daddy went to work and W and I took our time getting ready and  getting breakfast at the hotel before coming home, dropping off our kitty, closing the windows and turning the ac back on.  It was well over 90 degrees in our apartment this morning, so we headed back out to run some errands.  Not sure what possessed me to come back home before heading to an event at my husband's work, but we did....and the rest of the day went down hill from there.  I think W and I were really just letting out all of the stress and frustration from the day before, but things got bad quickly and included a very cranky toddler, lots of literally spilt milk, lots of laundry in need of washing (in part due to spilt milk and our laundry rhythm being out of wack) and a possibly broken little toe for me.  Needless to say, we never made it out the door and there were many tears from both W and I throughout the day.

I was so grateful when my husband walked in the door this evening with dinner and everything started to calm down a bit.  W was excited for his time with Daddy, I was able to vent a little and I have some time to myself now  to breathe, finish up a needle felting project and blog.

And so, I relaxed and recovered by adding the finishing details to this little duck that I started at my women's group at church last week.

Ducks have been very popular in our house lately.  Each spring, we have a pair of ducks that come to visit our apartment complex.  The kids in our neighborhood are very find of the ducks and W and the little girl I babysit have been quite into ducks ever since.  Their favorite pages of the books we read are the ones with the ducks and there are days where I feel like all I hear out of either of them all morning is "duck" and "quack".

So, in honor, of the toddlers in my life, I am adding this lovely little wool duck to our nature table.  I am sure every time I look at it, I will remember how nice it was to sit and work with the wool and the needles and just relax after a couple of difficult days.  Needle felting often does that for me.  I really love the creative process of sculpting wool and shaping it into something special with the repetitive poking of my felting needles.  People often tell me that the "stabbing" of the wool, must feel like a release when I'm angry, but I think it is deeper than that.  It hits further down in my soul with the creative process.

All of this has me wondering what other things people do to help re-center themselves and regain their sanity. Tomorrow, we will go to church, worship, and give thanks.  That often helps me to recenter, but I'm thinking this week I may need a bit more.  I'm wanting to develop my own little personal mini retreat for Monday morning/afternoon and thinking on the things that would help me to replenish and rejuvenate myself before my husband goes back to work on Tuesday.  I'm thinking that some time, reading, meditating, praying and drawing/writing in my illustrated journal would help.  I'm also thinking it would be really good to go for a walk and to reconnect with nature if I can manage a time that's not too hot and my toe's not throbbing too much.  I'd also like to take some uninterrupted time to work on some more creative projects.  I need to check the weather and check around a bit to see if there's someplace that I can go outside of the house for all of this.

If you were able to take maybe 4-6 hours for your own personal retreat to help rejuvenate and take care of yourself so you can better care for your family, where would you go and how would you spend your time?