Do you smell that?

No, not the pollen (does pollen even smell?) But warmth, clean cut grass, flowers, the beach....or maybe I smell the beach because of my new Scentsy scent "Rio Beach" (I highly recommend it). Anyway, the beach. I LOVE the beach. It's in my blood. Literally, it really is. There's something about the sand and ocean that is so peaceful and tranquil, if I had to pick a place to die, it would be the beach...in a totally non-morbid kind of way.

I'm not quite sure where my love of the beach stems from. It could be the fact that I was brought up on the Jersey Shore, and spent every single summer as a baby, toddler, young girl and teenager at our family beach house. (I'll save the 'beach house' for another post, as it holds a special place in my heart, and I'm so excited we still have it to take my children to)....but yea, I love the beach...

So I woke up this morning to birds chirping and sun shining through the blinds....(also a 3 year old jumping on top of me...something about "get up mommy, its morning" and "cartoons...juice"...its all so vague)...anyhoo,  it was an actual day we had no plans. I was caught up on house work, school work and Noogs had no school..so what was I going to do on this gorgeous day? Half asleep I got out of bed, made my tea, and sat on the couch for a good episode of 'Martha Speaks', Noogs asked "mommy, what are we doing today", I knew what I wanted to do. "We're going on a picnic to the beach". The excitement on his face was like I just told him Batman and Robin were outside and Spiderman and Santa were on their way. He's so my child. And a double bonus, I'll do a run on the boardwalk with the kids in the jogger! 
It was about 7:45 at this point....I started getting ready right away...as getting ready for a day trip with two children by yourself is quite a tedious task.

So I did the usual, gave Noogs breakfast, fed myself breakfast and as I'm eating breakfast I'm totally using my multi-tasking skills and making lunch for the actual picnic part of our day. (PB&J for the Noogs, chicken salad for me and Boo..and some other snacks).

I woke my sleepyhead daughter up after 8, fed her, got myself ready, which really consisted of water on the face, a teeth brush and throwing on my smelly workout clothes (hey, I have no one to impress). Getting the kids ready is the tedious part. I usually spend about ten minutes alone chasing Noogs in a circle to go brush his teeth, meanwhile Boo is following me around like a puppy with her "mama" and sticking up her arms. Dressing an almost one year old is fun too. I usually give her my phone to play with, but I think she's starting to realize I lock it and now she just throws it and the squirming continues. By the time I am done getting them ready, I'm not quite sure why I need to go workout, because surely I just burned 700 calories....

FINALLY, by 9:45 we are ready to leave. I live about twenty minutes from the actual Oceanfront. I try not to freak down at the Oceanfront during heavy tourist season (will talk more about VB in future posts), but April is pretty locale. And the Grommet Island beach park is tons of fun.

So we get to the beach a little after 10, takes me a good ten minutes to load up the jogger, kids, and all our supplies and we are finally ready!

I told Noogs I was running first before we went to the park. He was totally fine with it, until I actually started running. The whining was hurting my ears and I couldnt concentrate on breathing, nor could I really breath because it was so windy. I finally initiated a game of "eye spy" and he allotted me a 3 mile span to run....but at least I got the workout in!


Afterwards we went to the Grommet Island park. This place is really cool. Those who live in the area, if you've never been, check it out. And if you have, you probably love it too and if you don't..you're weird. Anyway....this was Boos first real time at the beach! I mean she's been to the beach last year at the beach house, but she was like a month old and was in a netted bouncer under an umbrella, I mean really, could that be any fun? So since she's like a real little person now, she got to enjoy it and LOVED it. Check out how much fun my girl had today.

Noogs had a blast too!



Even the whole "mommy, I think I'm stuck" ordeal didn't ruin his day!



There was one minor argument over a shovel....stubborn little peeps...no idea where they get the stubbornness from...Boo won this fight..

At this point I figured I better feed these kids before they really start getting out of hand..so we had a picnic. A windy picnic, but a picnic nonetheless!

Looking for seashells was a total bust. In my head I pictured coming home with a bunch of seashells to paint with Noogs...but this guy was all we found...

Oh well, maybe next time.

So yes, beach season has begun and my little peeps have beach in their blood. Its going to be a great spring/summer. I mean really, how could it not with moments like these?