not quite the beach

The weather is beautiful here! Everything is green. Birds are chirping. Hudson is making as much noise as humanly possible for one person and I don’t feel bad for sending him outside. The flowers are blooming. Summer is coming!

Some people live by beautiful lakes. Some have ponds in their backyard. The really lucky few have the ocean nearby. We have…the lock and dam.

It isn’t the ocean and it isn’t a clean lake, but it is the Arkansas Rive and it is close. Anything can be a beautiful adventure with the right perspective. I wanted a picnic at the beach to the sound of waves crashing against the sand. Since that is not an option – we packed a cooler and headed to the lock and dam. Totally the same. Okay, not at all, but it is what we have.

My kids are all getting so big. I am not sure it will ever stop getting weird. I guess maybe when they all stop growing and stay the same size I’ll be able to get used to it. Maybe.

Nights like this bring out my kids personalities in funny ways. Corbett could not handle that we didn’t have a plan. He wanted details of exactly what we were going to do, which I couldn’t give him because we didn’t have plans. It drove him crazy until he decided to just embrace our ‘whatever-ness’. Hudson found a dead fish and put a grape in its mouth as entertainment for the next people that passed by. My third son packed a bag of books and immediately found a tree to settle down on. My daughters ran straight to the water and began creating things. Chris found a hook, a broken fishing pole piece, and some fishing line and began trying to catch fish.

I sat back with my camera in hand soaking them all in…