A night off at the beach.

The other day I told Steve, “We’ve got to get out and do something.” Our weekends often turn into these lazy two days of odd jobs, always fewer than I was hoping to attend to, and I feel like Monday arrives and I look back and think what did we actually accomplish? I think those weekends are necessary, yes. But we’ve had too many of them recently. (Maybe we’re still resting from all the constant going we did when we were abroad?) I’m ready to get out. Go for a hike. Head to the beach. Leave town and drive along the coast for breakfast at a place that’s new to us. This shouldn’t be hard, but for some reason it is!

Also in typical weekend fashion, I like to take time off from cooking dinner. It’s not the kids’ favorite thing about the weekend/me, but Mama needs a break. I’m happy to eat yogurt and granola, some leftover cooked chicken breast on a salad, veggies and crackers and hummus. Just an opportunity to not be in the kitchen cooking and cleaning! I take it with both hands and relish it. This weekend we grabbed our newest beach toys by Beachmate, stopped at a deli for wraps and chips on the way, and plopped ourselves onto the beach for the evening.  No fuss, no prep, no cleanup, no jamming everything haphazardly into a beach bag. Grabbed basically one thing, stopped for food, and hello beach. (Side note: I will never, ever take for granted how close we live to the beach.)

Beachmate takes the fuss out. Instead of scouring the deep cracks and crevices of your shed for all the misplaced beach toys, it’s all fits into the carrier bag (I love organizational systems that work!!!). Buckets of different sizes, fabric handles instead of the cheap plastic ones, shovels that clip on, a beach towel, and a cooler too. Not to mention, it’s sturdy. These things will not be breaking any time soon to just be tossed into the beach toy graveyard with all the other broken beach toys. Seriously, how many sets of beach toys have you bought? Too many. This one will be the last one. And when you’re not using the buckets as buckets, flip them over as tabletops for your drinks and sandwiches. Beachmate made the evening that much simpler. And my life has a whole lot of chaos, so when things are simple, I really, really like it.