Sweet Virginia Vacation

Ahh, the beach. Seems like everyone in the world should go to the ocean once a year. It's good for the soul, and not too bad on the feet either. Ours was a long time in coming...last year we had plans to go and canceled at the last minute when our car broke down and needed an expensive repair. This year, everything lined up. My sister and brother in law found some rustic cabins in First Landing State Park, Virginia Beach. There were about 18 miles of hiking/biking/running trails throughout the park. Seth called it a runner's paradise. (Yes, except for those mornings when it felt like 85 degrees by 7:30am. Nothing like working up a good sweat!) We were a hop, skip, and a jump from the Chesapeake Bay with its calmer waves and a short drive from the Atlantic shore, including a busy boardwalk. It seemed like we got the best of all worlds. We even found a farmer's market and Trader Joe's to do our grocery shopping for the week! Anyhow, my sister's family stayed in one cabin, and we stayed in the other with my mom (God bless her...one bathroom for all of us, and she shared a room with Myles). We spent a full week there, hitting the beach almost every day, taking ample time to run, bike, and hike, walking the board walk at night, cooking tasty meals that almost always included a happy hour (courtesy of Seth). The photo of Finn is the kids' version...virgin coladas. Seth and I had a date night and ate at a local tapas restaurant just across the street from the beach. The food was outstanding. We saw dolphins, both while on a boat tour with the kids and from the shore of the Atlantic, when they were close enough to Seth and Brian for them to swim out to meet them.

Myles is leaping and bounding ahead these days. He has a voracious appetite for reading, and will sit alone with books for long periods, "reading" to himself or to others. He and cousin Kaleb learned to jump waves in the ocean, and on the last day, Myles started trying to surf using this cheap yellow foam board we got for him. He climbed up to the top of a light house with us, and really enjoyed just about every minute of this vacation, especially being with cousin Kaleb and Grandma. Grandma taught him some card games like "swwaap the Jack," and he couldn't get enough.

It's amazing what vacation can do. We came back more centered, grateful, and connected. On Father's Day I ran on the beach in memory of my dad, so thankful for this legacy of running that he handed off to me. In some ways, his absence was the hardest thing about the trip, but in other ways he was right there, laughing with that beautiful smile of his, marveling at what these grandsons of his can do, enjoying a good cup of coffee in the morning, the simple things. If I open my heart up wide enough, he's always there.

Myles the Gymnast

Dear restless natives, here is installment number 1 of Myles' gymnastics performance his last week of preschool (last week). He is now at home with me for two weeks, and we are traveling (virtually) all over the world with a wonderful world map and an art/activities book that someone had the foresight to gift us with before Myles was born. Today we visited Japan and Korea and made a Japanese doll (Myles drew his first face!) and a Korean drum. I'm hoping to take him to enjoy some french crepes before our jaunt comes to a close...

He really is in this precious, inquisitive stage that feels very different from where he was six months ago. He's like a sponge (he overheard Seth say this to me at dinner and piped up with, "I'm not a sponge!"), taking it all in and just loving the world. This week he learned how to hit a nerf baseball. He also baked cookies with Seth and wanted to deliver every last one to every last neighbor on our street. The girls next door weren't home until after he went to bed, so he woke up at 7am, sprung out of bed and said, "Let's take cookies to the girls!" Needless to say, they did get some cookies on their way to school.

Last weekend, Seth's brother Greg visited us with his wife Megan and their 7 month old Molly. Myles was very interested in baby Molly, and quite pleased when he could make her smile or laugh. He also had a hard time sharing the spotlight. We took Molly for her first trip to the pool, and I had to practice deep breathing as Myles never seems to want to wear those swimmy things on his arms but would rather just hang on to a floating noodle. We loved their visit!

I'm bone tired and want to run tomorrow morning, so I'm going to sign off and leave you with this video. As you can see, Myles' instructor takes preschool gymnastics very seriously, and Myles became a bit silly with all the attention directed at him for this performance. He loved it.