I've become that person, wearing clothes on the beach. "But it's so practical, I'll be chasing after the kids!" In my defense, I was right.

 Essie's "Mint Candy Apple" is one of my go-to summer polishes. My other favorite: Essie's "Watermelon." 

Every season I create a "bucket list" full of things to do with the girls during that particular season. Summer's list includes things like make s'mores (check), play at the splash pad (check), and let Carrie stay up late to catch lightning bugs (still need to check that one off!). Also on the list was "take a day trip to the beach." We had our week long beach trip in late spring and C loved making sand castles, collecting shells, splashing in the water -- I just knew we had to get her back before the end of the summer. Luckily for us, we don't live too far away.

But distance and convenience are two very different things when you're considering a trip (even a day trip) with two very young children. It's so easy to say but it's so much work to pack everyone up, they won't do well on the drive, everyone will be sticky and hot and tired, they won't even remember this... so why bother? That sounds terrible, but if you're a parent of little ones, you know you've thought it! I get it. There are many times I've thought the very same things, and even times I've let those thoughts make up my mind.

But not this time. 

This time, we spontaneously threw caution to the wind on a sunny Saturday and, mid-afternoon, packed up our 3.5 and 1 year old plus 1000 beach toys, 1 cumbersome beach umbrella, 40 snacks, and a couple of changes of clothes and hit the road for the hour-ish drive to the shore. And you know what? It was so much fun. Don't get me wrong: It's not like the whole thing went off without a hitch. Hadley did nothing but eat handfuls of sand the entire time we were on the beach, I forgot her pajamas to change into, and both of the girls were literally covered head-to-toe in sand with it stuck in places I didn't know existed. At one point Steve was dousing them both with baby powder while they stood in the trunk of our car (baby.powder.everywhere.) and said jokingly (ok, maybe half jokingly) "This is the stuff nightmares are made of!" But it occurred to me that we could substitute the word "memories" for nightmares and look at it entirely differently. ;) 

And it's so true.

Memories aren't usually made from the times when things go perfectly smoothly. Most of my fondest childhood memories are of the times things didn't go according to plan: getting stuck in a downpour, piling way too many family members into a car for a trip to the diner, getting lost on a road trip, huddling in our sleeping bags downstairs during a bad thunderstorm. And in fact, I'm smiling now just thinking of our humid summer Saturday "down the shore:" Hadley's first ice cream cone, walking along the boardwalk while hungry seagulls swooped in and out, riding the carousel with blinking carnival lights swirling around us in a haze but our girls' joyful little faces perfectly in focus.

So if you're on the fence, take the trip. Even if the kids don't remember it, you will. :)

The Advice I Didn't Know I Needed

We've all had them: Those moments of clarity that seem to make everything suddenly make sense and propel us forward, sometimes after a long time of standing still. I've had a few of these "Aha!" moments throughout my life and they've always signaled a sort of shift in mindset and proceeded big change. 

The most recent was coming across the exact advice I didn't know I needed. I had been dreaming up the blog for quite sometime but kept returning to doubts about whether it was even worth it to move forward when the blogging world had exploded so much and, seemingly, there were a million other people like me out there but with more experience, better cameras, and perfectly styled everything. Even though it was something I truly felt I was meant to do, I'd think, why me? What do I have to offer that isn't already out there? 

And then I stumbled across advice which I interpreted to mean: 

There is no one already out there offering the world exactly what you have to offer.

I know how simple and obvious this seems, but take a while to really let those words sink in. There might be countless other people out there doing what you do (writers, artists, researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, whatever it is), but not one of them is going to have your exact voice or perspective. If you think that voice is important -- and you should -- then you owe it to yourself and to the rest of us to let it be heard. 

Hopefully you've already figured this out. But with three decades on the planet and what I thought was a decent amount of confidence, I hadn't ever thought about it like that. All of the "buts," and the "what ifs," and the doubts had overshadowed that truth. 

If you don't go out there and begin, if you don't put what you uniquely have to offer into the world... nobody ever will. And nobody has already. 

What's one thing you've been waiting to begin?