It’s been a while since the girls and I busted down to the beach for bagels and coffee on the sand on an early weekend morning. We used to do it more and it’s sad that summer is already gone and we made it down there only twice. Every year I vow to have more beach days and every year we get caught up in our regular inland lives (we only live 15 minutes from the beach!!) and forget we live right next-door to the most gorgeous natural tourist attraction that most people have to pay dearly to go see.

Funny how that is. The sun shines everywhere I guess.

But we made it. I’ll thank the girls and my guilty conscience. I did feel terrible about not taking the dogs. But taking the dogs adds easily two extra hours, driving a different vehicle that is more work, lots of pulling and tugging and a buttload more sand everywhere. Mostly the pulling and tugging is what is hard. Have you seen my dogs at the ocean? They go bananas. I wish I could let them go free at the beach but they have a strict leash on policy.

The girls are a million times easier than the dogs to manage. They sit and eat their breakfast and then go off and splash in the waves and I sit there watching them for as long as I can until my to-do list at home calls my name too loudly.

Every time we say we are just going to the beach for breakfast and every time they beg to stay the whole day. More guilt. Why didn’t we plan a beach day this summer?!! We’ll have to do a fall beach day. But not this weekend because Pedram’s 80th birthday is going down and I have a million details to make sure happen. So many things!!!

The waves were huge that day. Probably wash back from the hurricanes on the other side of the world.

I couldn’t really get my camera to capture how gigantic they were. The mist from the pounding waves rose all the way to the parking lot.

And then my to-do list called me and we hustled back home, sad we couldn’t stay.