Beach Day

We have finally had some summery weather. My deepest apologies to all of you who have been suffering through the heat wave of 09, but last Friday we were in jackets and long pants for a 6:00 walk and at one point the boys asked for mittens. Which was actually appropriate. It was 7 degrees and windy.
(For those of you who just hit the floor in shock, I'm Canadian, that's Celsius, it was 45 F).

This past Friday however it was 30C (86F) and I almost wept for the sheer joy of feeling the sun on my skin.

But instead of weeping I hit the beach.

Now, I live in Southern Alberta, and so beach is rather loosely defined. There is a lake. It is named for the filthy, disease ridden white and grey water birds that populate it's shore. It's a perfect lake for smaller children as the shore is very very shallow and stretches on forever. It's like a gigantic wading pool only with disease ridden birds minnows.

There is sand. Or what passes for sand in Alberta. Once it got wet it very very closely resembled mud, but as long as it was dry my kids happily threw it at one another dug in it.

And then there was family. My sister and I actually live in the same province for the first time in 11 years. The lake is midway. We met. To see cousins running, playing, teasing and laughing, well I can almost ignore the rodents with wings. I'm too busy enjoying the happy chaos.

There's just something about family. We had a cousin come too. His kids have never met mine and yet, they played together as if they did it every day. We all chatted as if there hadn't been six years and hundreds of kilometres between our last meeting.

It was warm. It was busy. It was noisy. It was messy. It was laughter. It was a day at the beach. It was perfect.