Going away

It's hard sometimes to take a good look at your life when you're right in the middle of it, and the best thing to do, maybe the only thing, is to take a big break. A stay at home break or a vacation sort of break, either will do and we were fortunate enough to have had the latter this past week.

At the risk of showing the neverending vacation slide show or telling story after story about what happened this past week, I'll just try to hit the high points and not drag you through every detail.

For the first time on a vacation since having kids I feel like I actually found time to relax. Deep, long, winding down to the bone relaxation, the kind I really needed. I read a few books, put down the knitting, took pictures, played, watched tv, and even dozed a bit on the beach once or twice. Bliss.

The kids had non-stop board games going of one kind or another all week. My favorite is to watch Lauren and John play chess and listen to how they bargain with one another.

"Okay, well, if you take my pawn then I can get your castle, do you want to do that?"

"Yeah!"

Don't ask. Somehow they get along much better than a brother and sister should.


Legos were still everywhere.

The kids had a ball finding hermit crabs in the Bay, that was a first for all of us. John made them a little corral one day.

Then there was the relentless search for blue crabs. Their only motive is to catch them and release them back into the water, not eat them. That may change over the years, but for now they don't understand the whole appeal of the blue crab, they just know they're tricky and fun to catch. I could pick crabs all day if I had enough. Hmmm. This might be a good system, they catch, I eat.

Fishing was all around us.

Nearly consuming some of us.

And astonishing the rest of us. Below you can see John reeling in his five-foot shark. Yes. Shark. Chills.

We ate plenty of seafood. Just not the sharks.



On our last day, a hike through the woods to an unadvertised part of the beach,

yielded a jar full of sea glass, and an impromtu scavenger hunt. I love those. And I love sea glass especially when I find it myself.

But perhaps what will stand out most in my mind was the calm, the slowing down, the change of pace and the chance to reprioritize, to plan for the future, and soak up the present. Now if I can just carry on the vacation mentality we'll be getting somewhere.