We LOVE Olivia

And, apparently, the feeling is mutual:


More later.

(Promise)

Summertime, Summertime, Sum, Sum, Summertime...

I heart summer. We only get like 2 weeks of it here in Minnesnowta, so we enjoy it thouroughly!

I'm joking, I'm joking. 2 months.

When I first moved here from San Diego, I remember a friend saying to me, "Wanna go to the beach?"

I thought she was kidding. "Yeah, which coast should we go to? West Coast or East? Ha HA!"

She was confused. "No I mean to Lake Johanna to swim!"

I laughed hysterically. "Whatever. THAT little sad stretch of fake sand is NOT a beach! That's a lake. " I laughed for days about the fact that poooooooor Minnesotans didn't even know what a beach was.

Fast forward to um, today.

Corene: We're going to the BEACH! The BEACH! I'm so excited we're going to the BEACH!!!"

Pride swallowed. My own children don't know what a REAL beach is. Ahem.

BUT, I've also learned how utterly AWESOME the not-real beach can be!

My friend Sarah and her little girl Elle joined us at the beach today.

The only real tragedy of the day was my own mommy gag reflex.

It involves the bathroom.

Obviously. Because we all know how clean and sanitary beach bathrooms are.

So, I'm holding the stall doors shut for the girls because *of course* all the locks are broken. They are in seperate, but adjacent stalls. I hear Corene say, "Cool! That's cool! You should show Mommy!"

I didn't stop to think about it. They stepped out and I stepped in.

As I'm using the restroom, I hear them talking. "Wow!" "It goes in and out!" "That's neat!" "Show Mommy!"

I still wasn't even the least bit curious.

Until I stepped out of the stall, when Ava ran up to me and pushed her new found treasure into my face.

A pretty, pink, shiny, tamp*n applicator. An empty one, to be exact.

3 gags, 4 gags, more and more gags. Mommy had twenty-four gags.

After I freaked right out of my skin and yelled at her to "DROP IT, DROP IT!", I promptly scrubbed her hands at that beach sink that HAD ACTUAL REAL SOAP, which I am completely certain was placed there by God just for me.

We had ourselves a nice little talk about touching things in bathrooms, even things that are pretty and pink and slide in and out.

Moving along.

We had a really fabulous time. Summer, friendship, water, good food, children, hand soap....

I've had some of those "time standing still" moments this summer, you know, the kind where you snap a picture in your mind and you just know you will some day (sooner than we think) think, "those were the days!"

I snapped some pictures in my mind of the kids playing in the sand and water together.

I mentally recorded the sounds of them laughing.

I dug my feet into the sand and willed myself to remember these precious days.