Revisiting the beach!

I love where we live!  Country, city, farmland, hills, and the ocean are all nearby.  And the mountains are pretty darn close too.

The weekend before last, we headed out to the coast for a Family Day that was quite smile worthy.

The Northern California coastline is gorgeous!  While I've never been to any kind of tropical beach, I've been to both the East & West coasts and of all the locales I've visited, I just love the northern half of this state's coastline.  I start relaxing before we're even out of the car as the terrain and the air changes.

This is a no swimming beach, too many rip tides.

But, that didn't stop our fun!

There was chilling and playing in the sand to do.

And digging.  Lots o' digging.

And sand flying (she had more sand than hair on the top of her head by the end of the day!).

One dug a very narrow, uniform hole longer than the arm's length, while the other made some sand angels.

Hubs adventure walked with our boy, several times, seeing what the ocean had washed up.  And in between adventure walks, Hubby grabbed some smooth stones to create stacked sculptures, reminiscent of our dating days when one of our ocean visits treated us to a woman creating these all over the beach.

And me?  I hung out, clicked away with my cameras, looked at the kids' sand creations & holes, picnicked with the fam, got a wee bit obsessed looking at this weathered & worn log, tracing the lines with my eyes, and simply relaxed.

This was the best family beach visit ever.  The kidlets are old enough now that we weren't spending the whole time chasing them or conversely, forced to cop a squat when our arms tired of carrying a baby.  We've always loved our visits to the coast, but now, I think we'll love them even more!

Where do you like to go as a family?  Where do you relax?

Love the Ocean, Dig the Beach recycled and revisited for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop!  Hope you're having fun this summer...we are! :>

#photoadayjuly so far...

A 365 photo challenge is more than daunting to me, but I always perk up when I see the photo-a-day lists and/or challenges for a single month.  Looking for a li'l inspiration, I decided to hop aboard with Fat Mum Slim & her #photoadayjuly list with a different photo theme to click each day!

Here's where I'm at for July, so far....

#selfportrait

When one waits until the very end of the day to suck it up & take a pic o' oneself, there's a chance it will be after a shower & one will have a towel wrapped on one's head...just before midnight!

#busy

I remembered the clear bands for the next day's post-swimming-lesson-shower braids!

#bestpartofyourday

A million toys and a box Costco goodies came home in becomes a favorite toy, tv viewing chair, & li'l artist sketchpad.

#fun

Husband went to build with kidlet's thousands of Lego bricks - the final product came out really cool...still need to snap a pic o' that.

#onthefloor

Bedside book stacker.

#chair

Rockin' awesome place to curl up & read.

#garden

Flowering artichokes are so beautiful, but since they taste so darn delish, we only let one go to flower in our backyard!

#lunch

Random veggie fridge grab makes a yummy lunchtime salad.

#big

Standing under big trees, snapping the big sun in the big sky.  Big.

#yourfavoritecolor

Favorite color?! I could never pick just one...completely depends on what I'm love with at the moment or where my mood is taking me.

#letter

A big thank you to my boy for picking this shirt to wear...beyond Super timing!

#texture

Couldn't pick just one - peeling paint, brick walkway, road, garden rock, driveway.

#open

It has been a big reading summer, for sure.

#sign

Shoot!  Didn't go anywhere this day & needed a sign pdq.  And then I remembered the one on a kidlet's wall that I brought home from a grownup girlfriend getaway weekend to Disneyland a few years ago!

#youraddiction

Print books, ebooks, new books, old books, our books, borrowed books, you name it - we're reading it this summer!

I've missed two days (building & finger...tsk, tsk) - apparently, I'm not so awesome at a specific photo each day...but, I'll get there. ;>

If you're doing #photoadayjuly, let me know - I'd love to see where you've clicked this month!

Wait! Am I reading an ebook or a bound book?!

Crack open a new book; feel the spine crunch as its insides fan apart, its outside backbends for the first time.  Inhale fresh, crisp unread pages.  Hold a treasure that promises to whisk you to another space.  Heaven.

From my first book read at age three to more than half of my thirties that was how I experienced a book - save the "new" part as while my home overflows with bound books, I've also checked out thousands of cherished-by-many books from libraries across the country.

Enter the last year, a Kindle app for my laptop, and my new friend, Droid - the smartphone that never seems to leave my side now - with its own Kindle app to read by.  And the ebooks that I never thought I'd be interested in have wriggled their way not only into my library, but the very manner in which I read.

I realized this last bit late last night while reading my newest bound book, Bloodline, and I actually pressed my finger on a word on the page.  I mean really pressed it!  Why?  I didn't know what the word meant and was looking for the instant dictionary lookup that's ever so convienent when reading an ebook.  Yes, it was quite late, but it struck me how automatic of a response it was to an unknown word.

And in an instant I was torn between my old, ever constant love of traditional bound, paper pages in hand books and the new fancy schmancy, take with you wherever you go, easy to look up a word and continue reading ebooks.  Not only was I torn, but I felt like I was cheating....on both of them!

Ink stained fingers from newsprinted papers were cast aside as clandestine affairs with news aggregates across the interwebs ensued.  Multi-volume back breaking encyclopedias were left to dusty corners of a library as I embraced Google, who I would gladly smooch every single day.  Dictionaries disappeared off shelves and shattering, though predictable, news broke that the Oxford English dictionary would no longer be printed.

Admittedly, I don't think I've cracked open a paper bound dictionary in about fifteen years.  But, in the late hour my eyes were travelling along James Rollins' words on the pages of my printed edition of his latest Sigma thriller, I suddenly became all too aware of just how differently I access information today.

What about you?  Are you waving your arms in welcome, rolling out the red carpet for the next newest way to access information?  Or do you wave your arms wildly, sending the newest tech down the road?

I hope my world holds both.  I hope I'm inviting it in with arms wide and yet choosing to cherrish the trinkets of yesterday that I wish to never loose interest in; like my long standing bound book love affair.  May there always be rooms full of beloved bound books waiting to be read, thumbed through, and passed on to the next generation to get lost in.


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Affiliate links are used, though this post is not sponsored or solicited.  It's an honest response in reaction to finding myself trying to push tech onto my newly purchased old school paper bound book last night.