beach days

I have always loved the beach.  The sounds, the smell, the rhythmic motion of the waves, the treasures waiting to be discovered, the warm sand, the cool water lapping at my toes, or crashing against the shore.  I have lots of happy memories of visiting beaches in Southern California on family vacations growing up. Living in Florida, we were able to frequent some amazing beaches.  Living in Tampa, we were only 20 minutes from the beach and we sure took advantage of that fact.  At least as much as we could with 2 babies, a daddy in graduate school, and no income.  There is just something about the beach that makes my heart happy.

So, when we first moved here to Wisconsin, I was deeply offended when people here would say they were going to the beach.  I mean, there is no ocean anywhere near here, and I thought that the cold, rocky shore of a lake hardly qualified as a beach.  Mostly I was having a really hard time adjusting from living in Florida to living here, so I refused to even see what people here were calling a "beach."  Well, it took several years before I was willing to see what nature here had to offer.  Now,  I'll never say that this is as beautiful as Siesta Key, but there are some really pretty "beaches" that we can enjoy as a family.

This beach comes with the perk of being completely covered in small rocks.  This provides hours of rock throwing and skipping that my children can never get enough of.

We went to another beach less than an hour away that felt almost like a real beach.  (See, I'm trying...)  If it hadn't been so windy and cold, I might have actually believed that I was near the ocean.

The wind and chilly air didn't stop the boys from playing in the water to their hearts' content.  Plus, there are way less sharks in the water here to worry about!

And someday I'm going to take this little beauty to Siesta Key so she can see what a real beach is like!