Beach Update

Have loved having the kids here for this long weekend. Harleigh and Kasey arrived around 9:00PM on Thursday night and then his brother Kyle and girlfriend Morgan got here on Friday in time for dinner. I know, for a fact, that my love language to others is entertaining and feeding people. I don't do it that often, and so when I face a house full of people who love being showered with good food lovingly planned, prepared and served, I'm "on it" with a full heart and a smile on my face.

The kids have enjoyed fat juicy burgers on fluffy sesame seed buns, dressed with mayo, lettuce and fresh-sliced tomatoes. Corn on the cob slathered with butter. Harleigh and Kasey requested hash browns for the Friday night dinner, so those were served up crispy and glistening with oil, a perfect and guilty-pleasure accompaniment to our summertime beachy meal.

Hot coffee begins the day, and I'm front and center at the grille, making French toast — sliced Italian bread dredged in egg, milk and vanilla extract — enjoyed with melted butter and syrup. There's also fresh fruit, orange juice, and a plentiful amount of bacon.

I try to provide a good variety of foods, so lunch one day was tomato slices, cold cut sandwiches, fresh veggies and Ranch dressing dip, chips and a cold seafood salad. Today it was fried chicken, red grapes, veggies and dip. And there's always plenty of sweet tea to quench the hot day.

For last night's dinner I steamed snap peas and served up a giant hot pasta dish of bow tie pasta with herbed butter and almost 2 pounds of shrimp.

There's a colossal tub of ice cream in the freezer. The cheap kind that tastes more like flavored ice than cream, but marbled with fudge and spooned out of big bowls while looking out at the beach = a dessert made to make you smile.

Tonite for dinner I got a great deal on lobster tails. So I planned a nice send-off meal for the kids that included baked potatoes and steamed asparagus.

Enough of food.

The kids usually spend the first part of the day in the ocean, bobbing and diving and jumping the waves, talking for hours. I sit on the soft sand in my beach chair, under an umbrella, reading and watching the kids. My butt goes numb, I sit so long. And that's not a complaint. After lunch, the four shower and nap, read, get on their laptops, or watch TV. In the late afternoon we go beachside again for walks or playing games in the sand.

I'm up early every day in time for the sunrise, but was surprised on Saturday morning when the boys' alarms went off at 6:45 so they could wake the girls and go sit on the beach and see the sun come up. It was quite sweet.

Kyle and Morgan at sunrise.