One of the cool things about living in the Raleigh area is that you can get to the beach in about two hours or so. The downside, of course, is that we typically only make it out there once a year. But we’ve gone in 2009, 2010 – skipped 2011, because, you know, I had a baby and my marriage was disintegrating and all that stuff – but went again last year. It’s always fun.

This year, my parents and I took the girls to the beach and met up with my brother there. Of course, traveling with kids is exhausting, but overall it was a fun trip. And the kids were amazingly well-behaved. I was expecting the drive there and back to be far worse than it was, but they did great. Catie shared her iPad with Lucy and they listened to music together.

(Side note: Catie is obsessed with “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore, and has been for months. She plays it on repeat until you’re ready to rip out your ears. On a two-hour road trip, it gets old FAST. But, Lucy now loves it too and says, “Play da pop some tags song?” which is basically the cutest damn thing ever. So, fine, let’s hear it one more time, and Mommy will thank the stars that she remembered to double-check that she was downloading the bleeped version.)

As for the trip, I didn’t go as crazy with my camera as I normally do, but I did get a few good pictures while we were there.

This was one of the few seconds that Lucy was smiling when she was close to the water. Unlike last year, she was not a fan of either the water or the wet sand. She kept saying, “No down! No down! I no like the water!”

On the upside, Catie and Lucy did play together really nicely in the sand, during the few brief moments that Catie wasn’t out jumping waves in the ocean. (This picture makes me laugh only because man, that is a LOT of blonde hair right there.)

Lucy’s favorite place was lying on the blankets where the sand and water couldn’t touch her. She did a lot of lounging around, pretending to nap and then laughing when she came up.

“Suh-pise! I not go night-night!” Oh, Luce. Good one. You almost had me thinking you were taking an unprompted nap for a second there. Right.

My dad, my brother, and I took turns holding Catie’s hands in the water while she jumped the waves. She went farther out into the ocean than she’s ever gone in her life, and she had a blast. At one point when I was with her, she screamed, “I COULD DO THIS ALL DAY!!!” Which is awesome. Except I can only jump waves for like, an hour, tops, before I’m completely worn out.

One of my favorite pictures I got of Catie was this shot of her walking to the water. And it reminded me of a picture I took of her almost four years ago. In 2009, when she was 2 years old, we were on the northern coast of Scotland, and I took a photo of her walking toward the ocean there. It’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken – I have an 8×10 of it framed in my living room.

Four years later, I got a similar picture of her on the opposite side of the same ocean. I love the contrasts and similarities – how she’s stepping forward on the same foot, but in a swimsuit instead of bundled up for winter. I may have to frame this one just to put it next to the picture from 2009.

We got home on Sunday, and my parents went back to their house to collapse. Chris came over, and he and I took the kids to a playground, and to a lake to catch some minnows. Both kids were completely exhausted and sound asleep by 8:15 on Sunday night, which has got to be some kind of personal record.

It’s probably a bad sign that I’m already craving more fried oysters, huh? Hmm.