Vacation

Two weeks out of the summer, we vacation at the beach. It is definitely the highlight of the summer. The days are an endless blur of sunscreen, sand and surf. At the end of the day, after bathing pounds of sand off my 5 kids, they're good and tired. Unfortunately, so am I. For some reason, vacationing at the beach seems to revolve around my 3 least favorite chores: sunscreen, baths, and laundry.


Spending days at the beach seems to go hand in hand with heavy, wet, dirty laundry needing to be done. There's nothing like turning on the dryer and hearing all the sand rolling around in there with the "clean" clothes and towels. My laundry pile is one of the reasons I'm on vacation in the first place. I was hoping that if I ran away it might disappear.


As previously mentioned, I have five kids. Bathing them is an enormous pain. There are just so many of them and they get slippery when they're wet! I'll be the first to admit that I don't bathe my children every night unless they've actually fallen into a mud puddle. After a day at the beach, however, it just has to be done. I can't feel good about myself sending my kid to bed covered in sunscreen with sand stuck in every crevice.


The chore of applying sunscreen on all of my kids (whose complexion resembles a glass of milk with freckles) is by far my least favorite. All those square inches of pale skin take forever to cover. It seems like hours before I've got them all greased up and ready to go. At which point I will, inevitably, miss some major part of my own body with the sunscreen. Who cares if I burn one leg?


Chores aside, this is still the highlight of the summer. We splash and play all day and head to bed - with a few new freckles - completely worn out and ready for another day of fun in the sun!