Happy birthday America!

Sunset Beach

There is a bit of work involved in taking two young children on vacation for two weeks. Sleeping in one room is not easy, especially when your one year-old likes to wake everyone up. Getting them off of the beach and showered multiple times a day is tiring, and watching them on the beach all day when they are running in two different directions is not exactly relaxing. But those are not the things I want to remember about this year at Sunset Beach. 

What I do want to remember is this:

Popsicles on the deck with cousins

Stella's fearlessness around the ocean (and in the sand, on the steps, climbing the couch, and anywhere and everywhere)

Lots of time playing on the beach with cousins

Foard and Elk in their matching Volcom shirts

And spending time with Elk in general.

Also, my mom's joy in getting to spend time with all three of her grandchildren:

And our many, many sand castles:

We carried on the tradition of walking to the pier every night to get ice cream. Foard usually chose strawberry because red is his favorite color, but sometimes he chose "poconut". Stella walked on the hottest sand up by the dunes saying "hot, hot, hot" but not thinking to move. They are wild and rascally, but they loved being around the family and they settled right into the Sunset Beach routine.

When we moved to the coast I thought our Sunset Beach trip might lose some its luster, since we go to beaches all the time. It has not. It's not about being in a house on the beach, it's about being with family in the same house we've been sharing for 34 years. It's about watching my children play with their cousins on the same little spot of beach I played on with my cousins when we were little. It's about sitting on the deck strumming guitars and singing, and no matter how many directions we go in during the day (riding bikes, kayaking, yoga, surfing, skimmer boarding, Seafood Hutting) every single night we all sit down to dinner together.

Very little about Sunset Beach has changed in 34 years. There's a new bridge and a few more houses, but the island still feels quiet and safe. There are some new businesses, and some have gone. We have lost some people on the trip and gained some others, and some people leave for a few years and then come back. It is still a magical place where we can walk down the beach at night singing songs about the moon, chasing crabs, and searching for the triangular windows that let us know that we are almost home.

I am sad every year when I leave Sunset Beach. Always I think about how nice it was to be tucked in our beach house with my most loved ones for a week or two, and always I think about how things inevitably change for both the good and bad. The dunes shift, new houses are built. Children grow up and grown-ups grow old. I really hope that the sun never sets on our annual family Sunset Beach trip. My children are just beginning to be old enough to understand its magic.

Thank God for Fathers

Thank God for Fathers like this one:

He is patient and loving and works hard all day only to come home and roll up his sleeves to give baths, play with trash trucks, and clean dishes. We're so lucky he's ours.

Thank God for my own father...

...for always providing well for us, and loving us, and taking my children for their first boat rides.

Thank God for Stepfathers...

...for telling us jokes and teaching us about investing and oral hygiene. 

And thank God for the greatest grandfather who ever lived, and the fact that we'll see him in just a few days.

If the story was told, only heaven knows

But his hat seemed to me like an old halo

And though his wings, they were never seen

I thought that he walked on water

Happy father's day!

Preschool Art Gallery

If you have a preschooler, you have many, many pieces of art coming home. Some of them are great and others are...unable to be located after a day or two. I made this to hang in our playroom, so that my children't art can be on display all of the time. Next year I'll have TWO preschoolers, so the art will double!

It was nothing to make. I used string and thumbtacks and clothes pins. You could make a fancier one or buy one like this.

They approve!

We Saw a Bear

It is nice to have a place to go that is different from home. Where we live in the lowcountry it is flat. Hot. Marshy. So sometimes we head to a little cabin in the mountains...

where the air is dryer and cooler, there are ridges in the land, and best of all...

Mimi!

and the Captain

 and this time MeMaw too.

What do we do there? Read a lot. Eat a lot. Dig ditches and plant things and ride the train and go to town. We build towers, too, and stay up late to play games.

And we spend lots of time on the back porch rocking and swinging and waiting for something to happen. Sometimes there are deer, or wild turkey. At night there is just the sound of tree frogs and mysterious rustlings in the leaves. This time we saw a real bear, but I was not fast enough with my camera. We've seen bears at the cabin before, but this one was really big! He looked something like this:

I have always heard that bears love salmon, so I blame my mom's salmon spread for attracting him. It really is delicious. When I'm coming to visit she makes a big batch of it, and I can't ever get enough.

Salmon Spread

Ingredients

• 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh dill
• 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish, drained
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 pound (4 ounces) smoked salmon, minced

First

Cream the cheese in an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until just smooth. Add the sour cream, lemon juice, zest, dill, horseradish, salt, and pepper, and mix until just combined.
Next
Add the smoked salmon and mix with a spoon only, being careful to leave larger pieces of salmon. Chill and serve with celery, cucumber, or crackers.

Recipe adapted from Ina Garten and the Food Network.

The Healthiest and Yummiest Pancakes Ever

Happy Memorial Day! 

Every weekend should be three days long. It gives you time to settle in. Be together. Relax and catch up. We had a very simple weekend. No babysitters, no day trips, no live music or fancy dinners out. But it was the absolute best. Even tropical storm Beryl did not ruin our weekend. In fact, all it did was cause us to hold on to our hats as we explored...

...did some work in the yard...

...took some couch naps (after all of that yard work)

...and of course logged plenty of beach time.

We have been trying to clean up our diet. Diabetes runs in the family, and we want to avoid it and all of the things that come along with getting older. We also want to shed a few pounds and teach our children to eat more vegetables. In short, we want to be able to run distance, paddle the marshes, and bench press each other well into our nineties. So we've stopped eating grains, sugar, dairy, and anything that triggers an insulin response in the body. It's an experiment, but so far it's going well. After one week I notice that my appetite is manageable, I don't have ups and downs in the afternoon, and since my taste palette has been re-sensitized to real food, fruit and vegetables taste like heaven. I will let you know more as time goes on.

That said, what is Saturday morning without pancakes? I made these Paleo-friendly healthy pancakes and we all loved them, including the little ones. 

Pumpkin Almond Butter Pancakes

Ingredients:

2 egg

4 egg whites

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/3 to 1/2 cup maple almond butter (or regular if you can't find maple)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp nutmeg

oil for cooking (I like coconut oil for this)

First:  Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a whisk. It takes a few minutes to make everything smooth. 

Next: Heat a cast iron or nonstick skillet and add oil to coat the pan. Drop the batter in 1/2 cup servings. Flip when bubbles begin to appear and the edges are set. They cook up pretty fast which is a good thing if you have a child who loves pancakes as much as mine does. I served these with turkey sausage and agave nectar to go on top.

So far, eating healthy has been all pleasure and very little pain. And I'm glad, because we plan to live long enough to be able to afford our dream house on the beach:

No, I'm not serious. But I'd love to spend a weekend partying there!

The difference between girls and boys

It was such a relief when I found out that my second child was going to be a girl. I mean, girls are less active, right? Less climbing, less jumping, less running around and throwing toys and chasing trash trucks and putting out pretend fires. Girls just sit around and play with dolls and organize their hair accessories, right?

Surprise!

In case you were wondering, when Foard was this same age all he did was sit around and read all of the time:

See what I mean? 

The truth is, it's been a rare and much needed rainy day in Charleston, and both children are climbing the walls. I cannot imagine what mothers do in climates that keep them inside for most of the year. Thankfully, last night we had the privilege of swimming with good friends here. Swimming is our new favorite thing, and usually it means a very good night of sleep for all.

Foard and Henry, taking a break from their usual favorite activity: sitting around and reading all day. Yeah, right!