Saturday morning post...

Hopefully by now, assuming all has gone well and we didn't sleep in, we should be about halfway to our destination of Dauphin Island, AL. Mr. Wonderful rented us a beach house for a week and I'm soooo looking forward to doing nothing for a week. Wait, I've been doing that since June! Let me rephrase that...doing nothing but enjoying the sights and smells of the beach and hearing the laughter of kids as they splash around in the surf and build sand castles. Can you smell the Coppertone?

As a little girl, I loved family vacations to the beach. Being from SE Ohio, our summer destination was Myrtle Beach, SC. The factory dad worked at (still does) had a two week shut-down the end of July/first of August (in other words, FREE vacation days) so we always headed south. I still have shells lingering around from when I collected them as a child. A reminder of the times we were all together as a family, which didn't happen that often.

Knowing my love for the beach, Mr. Wonderful did everything in his power to move us to the beach I so loved as a kid, but my hormones were raging and I wasn't quite ready to leave the comfort of my mother's apron strings (I was 24, ha!). We eventually ended up in this blazing hot ass state of TX and been here for 9 years (that sound is me kicking myself in the ass!)

For Mother's Day last year, Mr. Wonderful rented a beach house off of Galveston. The first time I had been to the ocean in nearly 10 years. The Gulf Coast is nothing like the Atlantic, but it was a BEACH and I enjoyed every minute I was there. The best part of the whole weekend was that I got to sit back and watch my own kids as they experienced the ocean for the first time. We even caught a crab! I came home refreshed and detoxified from the stress of working full-time and raising 3 kids. A feeling that only comes from the peacefulness of the beach.

I have to send out kudos to Mr. Wonderful here...he puts so much thought and effort into planning vacations to ensure everyone gets to experience new things and go somewhere we haven't been, yet still enjoy the things we love. I love that about him! This vacation will knock off three more states neither of us have visited or driven through. It also brings him into the vacinity of two of his idols, Brett Favre (Hattiesburg, MS) and Jimmy Buffett (Pascagoula).

I'm slathering on the sunblock, donning the shades, and heading out to the salty piece of land.