I don't have a ton of memories of days at the beach from my childhood. My first memory of going to the beach involves jellyfish and a search for meat tenderizer. That memory blends with one of getting burnt terribly while in Puerto Rico when I was 5 and being covered in Olive Oil. As an adult I found the beach to be kind of boring...it's hard for me to read in the sun and no one ever wants go go in the water with me. it's also dirty. I don't tend to like lotions on my hands or sand on everything and never learned to appreciate the sublime pleasure of the sticky saltiness of ocean residue.
But having kids kind of changed that for me. I took the kids to the beach last Tuesday and we had a blast. We found crab parts and sea shells, ate BBQ chips, played in the water and tried to dig a hole so big the whole family could fall in it. We built and decorated sand castles with the shells we found, but the real fun was being the army that crushed them.
It is my goal for the summer to get to the beach once a week, though this week it's raining all week.
