Beach Week 2008

For the last few summers, toward the end, right before school starts our family has had "beach week."
This last week was the time for the annual tradition.

And even though we don't live anywhere near a beach, everyone had a great time.

We heard things like:
" we love beach week!"
"this has been such a fun beach week!"
"I love having beach week before back to school!"


Beach week for our family is a shift in thinking.
It's kind of like a feeling.
Its the winding up of the summer. Spending time together as a family relaxing.
Its about making a smooth transition from summer into back to school mode.
It is not about cramming as much as we can into the week before school starts.
I do a mental checklist of all the things that I have wanted to do over the summer.
And if we absolutely can only do it during the summer then we do it.
Otherwise it gets moved to the "want to do with the kids sometime" list.

I always get so sad when its time for the kids to go back to school and this week helps transition me into the new routine.
Oh, it also helps them!

This summer's beach week we:
watched a movie almost every night projected larger than life on our living room wall

we watched:
nim's island
collage road trip
robots
ratouille

we did lots of swimming

went out for snow cones

We also:
had a few friends over

drank soda
had lots of reading and snuggling and
made tents in every room in the house.

Savanna and Jack even got to spend time at work with Dad!

We finished up school supply shopping and planned out each child's morning and after school routines.

And that was beach week.

So much more I could try and say, but hard to come up with the right words to fit the emotions.
It is hard to believe that its time to turn the page ... (translate- its hard for me to believe summer is over!)