beach day

it feels strange to be shifting gears so suddenly after yesterday's heavy post.  my heart still hurts for courtney and yet rejoices knowing that tripp is experiencing joy upon joy in the presence of our savior.  so it feels strange to just move on.  and yet as i think about it, living this life with joy, loving on my family, being grateful and giving thanks to God- can all be ways to pay tribute to tripp's legacy.  in sorrow and in rejoicing, we give it all to the Lord for He sees and He knows our hearts.  and so with that in mind...  i have pictures to share.  it's what i do.  :)

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it's raining today.  but that's okay, i like rain.  i especially like rain when i don't have to go out in it.  rain and i have a good understanding with each other.

it was much the same with snow and i.  i really liked snow, too.  as long as snow stayed outside, and i stayed inside, snow and i also had a good thing going. 

except, i quickly came to learn that one cannot hide away from snow through an entire long, cold winter.  and if nothing else, minnesota winters are long and cold.  oh, so cold.  my family and i were not bears, so as much as i personally would have liked to hibernate through the winter, that was not going to happen.  food still had to be procured.  library books still had to be returned.  mail still had to be sent off and retrieved.  life still had to be lived.

so you can imagine what a happy girl i was once snow and i broke up.  the move back to california meant that snow and i would never be an item again.  i was freed from the shackles of snow.  so as much as i miss our other friends and loved ones back in the land of ten thousand lakes, snow (and winter and cold and freezing rain and white outs and black ice) was the one thing i knew i could surely live without.

and i was right.

last week, the weather here was wonderfully gorgeous.  temps in the 70s and 80s.  simply picture perfect.  so perfect that we got to hit the beach three times in that one week.  and that's more times than we made it to the beach the whole past year combined.  there's just something about taking advantage of the ability to spend a day in the sun and sand in the middle of january that cannot be passed up.

and it's something i can never take for granted again.  so for that, i thank you, snow.

mikey claims that he would love to live in snow.  but i'm pretty sure even he would say a beach day wins over a snow day in the middle of january.

these two hopped right into it.

and began the age-old game of trying to outrun the waves.

this one still needed to start with dipping in a toe.  while holding her daddy's hand.

and spent literally two minutes splashing around.

and then she was done.

as in, "i don't want the water to touch me again so i will do what is necessary to avoid it" done.

not so with this one.

or this one.

so while this one spent the rest of the day here...

the big sister...

and the big brother couldn't be extracted from the water.

and guess what?

the baby brother loved the ocean this time around, too!  much better reaction than his first time at the beach.

apparently he just needed his older sibs to show him how much fun the ocean can be.

this is when daddy realized that the water was still pretty cold.

me and my baby.

back in a bit for the rest of the beach pics!