{the one with the bad beach day}

First off, I want to thank everyone on the crazy encouraging feedback I received on my blog post last month! I can't tell you how much it meant to me to read your comments and hear your responses in person. It was honestly surprising to see how many others are thinking about health and fitness right now -  I guess we're all realizing that we're no longer 18-year-old's:) But this post is not about health - I'll save a follow-up post for another time. This post is about establishing family traditions. 

Or at least it was supposed to be.

When you first get married, people are always telling you that you need to establish familial habits. So you can imagine how great I've been feeling about our new, once-a-week beach and picnic tradition this summer. I mean, come on - that's a pretty awesome tradition. Especially when you add in the fact that I'm literally summer's BIGGEST fan after the winter we endured. 

Anyway, here we are on our third free Monday of the summer and we're looking up directions to a new beach, checking out the weather, and gearing up for another country music filled trip to the shore. I heard of a beach south of the city that seemed promising so we headed out the city, crossing our fingers for sunny skies and discussing our wonderful new tradition. To be honest, I was also imagining the yet-to-be-written, perfectly adorable, summery beach blog post complete with picnic advice and cute little couple photos. {I know, gag}

However, when we arrived, things didn't quite go according to my vision. The beach? Well, it wasn't really there. High tide removed almost all of the sand and left us with approximately 6 feet of rocky (and I mean ROCKY) shoreline. The sun was also hiding and it even felt a bit too chilly for bathing suits. My wonderful husband was starting losing faith in our plan. He suggested finding another beach or (gasp) going home. I, of course, refused to allow this perfectly perfect and quite bloggable moment to be thwarted by a lack of sand and sun. I even got offended that he would suggest abandoning the beach that I found (can you tell that my day was starting to go downhill?)!

I soldiered on and tried to lay out our beach blanket on the last sliver of sand. We sat down and began eating our packed lunches in a state of mounting tension. Before I could fully state my defense for the beach, the waves came up and we scrambled to get out of the way in time. Jesse started laughing hysterically at the sheer ridiculousness of our ill-fated beach day and encouraged me to give up and laugh it off too. And I wish I could say that I joined in and moved on - but we all know that a woman of my caliber of stubborness and complete lack of flexibility could do no such thing. While J surrendered to the picnic tables away from the beach, I defiantly put my towels on the rocks - yep the rocks - and laid down, bent on proving my point. Pretty soon after he walked away, I realized that my crazy had officially come out. I spent the remainder of my time at the beach praying and adjusting my attitude. 

Ah, traditions! So beautiful, aren't they? 

So anyway, I've been planning on telling you about our oh-so-cool beach tradition, but God had plans to humble me instead. And to be honest, I think my diva moment made for better post anyway. Sometimes I can get so caught up in the "perfect" day that I miss out on the entire point of such special times - who I'm spending my day with! So who cares if we didn't have a very instagrammable day? We laughed, we cried (ok, I cried), I learned a lesson, and we shared a strawberry frappe on the way home. 

It's the little things y'all:) 

By the time we left, the sand was finally starting to show :) Just our luck.