staycation

 So I dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a week long "staycation" and it was glorious.

(Dave hates the word "glorious" but sometimes it is just truly the most appropriate adjective.)

My brother and his wife rolled into town last Wednesday.  (Actually, they flew.  Can you imagine how crazy it would be if rolling across country was an actual means of transportation?  I'm getting way off track but this is the direction my mind wanders in when I have been spending a week doing nothing but chilling.  Seriously.  If I get any more chill, my pulse will slow down to a relaxed five beats per minute and I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon medically speaking.)

Dave and Jack are basically BFFLs (Best Friends for Life) so he took not just Thursday, not just Friday, but also Monday off from work!  This has been a long weekend for the record books.

We started things off with a bang.  Thursday is my mom's birthday but we kicked off the celebration on Wednesday with a night in and take out from Chipotle.  This was a wonderful sign of great things to come as we have spent the last several days chillaxing with nothing pressing and nothing scheduled.

On Thursday, we drove off to Quintana Beach where we had rented a cabin on the boardwalk.  It took us a while to realize it, but we were actually sleeping in a historic home from the 1800's.  Apparently, Quintana, as much of a ghost town as it is appears now, was one of the first places in Texas to have been explored by the famous Cabeza de Vaca.  Before hurricanes and disease wiped out most of the town's buildings and population, it was a happening summer destination for plantation owners and fancy people back in the day.  This may not sound like much, but to a history nerd, it just about made my trip.

This is the second time we have taken Katelyn to the beach and, again, she was not a fan.  I think it's the combination of the scratchy sand and the crashing waves that freaked her out.  Either way, she was just not interested, which is a shame because she looked like a legitimate surfer baby.  The Beach Boys song Surfer Girl ran on an infinite loop in my mind the entire weekend.

She spent most of her time on the shore sitting in her special baby beach chair playing with a half empty water bottle.

We celebrated my mom's actual birthday at Long John Silver's.  Things got a little crazy.  It was about an hour past bedtime and some people were getting a little punch drunk.

We spent our time at the Seaburn House playing in the warm waves, napping with the smell of the water still on our clothes, or sitting on the boardwalk in the breeze of ocean air while Kate ran around like a wild woman.

We also went out for late night walks on the beach while my parents stayed behind with sleeping Katelyn.  The breeze at night is refreshing and salty and the sand that just hours ago burned our feet flowed between our toes like a cool liquid.  Dave and I walked along the beach with Jack and Jessica and Lauren to the pier where a family was fishing in the light of the docks.  There will thousands of tiny fish that swarmed around our feet with each wave.  We had so much fun catching them and watching them swim back into the ocean.

On Friday, the air conditioning broke.  (I guess you shouldn't expect much out of a two hundred year old house.)  It took only a few minutes for the humid ocean air to feel overbearing and about an hour before conditions became intolerable.  Luckily, we got our money back and were able to pack up the car in a hurry and drive over to the air conditioned safety of Buccee's.

Sunday dinner was a "Make Your Own Mac and Cheese" Party at my parents' house.  This is a family favorite because who doesn't like pasta and cheese?  Also, even if you didn't care for pasta and cheese, I'm pretty sure you can't turn it down with fix ins like bacon and sausage, goat cheese, freshly grated parmesan, and pepperoni.

Tonight was our last night of "staycation" so we threw ourselves a pool party.  We brought the foil dinner ingredients we had planned to cook during our last night at the beach and threw everything on the grill while we played in the water.

Sitting around the picnic table, enjoying grill roasted veggies and hamburger and the sounds of an evening of family time at the pool, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness as I sensed the sun setting on the last few moments of this year's summer.  It's been a great couple months and a great couple days.  But, as sad as I am about the ending of a blissful time, I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.

And, really, I can't be too sad about everything because after summer comes fall and we all know how I feel about fall.