This weekend our family is enjoying a few days at the beach and, while Dakota thinks he is on "spring break", I know that we will be learning through our experiences here and I plan to make every day count! Yesterday we didn't do much by way of education because my older son had a college visit at Salisbury University. We had big plans to do the zoo while we were there, but we were exhausted after walking the campus for two hours and decided to call it a day and save the zoo for the weekend. The guys(husband, both sons and teenage friend/"adopted" third son) played a video game tournament while I took care of dinner and then we all headed to the beach for some football and frisbee fun. I got to walk a bit along the shoreline where the water was coming to meet the sand and the serenity of it all really hit me. The same motion of the water, the horizon, the beautiful cotton candy colored sky as the sun set...God is good. He will show us his presence if we just take the time to look. It's all here, every day, even when I'm not looking. The hectic life, the anxiety, the schedules, the family issues...everything I experience that causes me stress is all around me, but here, no matter if I am present or not, the serenity is always the same. The waves crash in. The water moves out. The sun rises over the ocean and then sets over the bay. It's always here and I just need to remember it and store it away in my happy place to go to when life becomes too much to handle back in the crazy place I call home.
Today is Earth Day and I can't let that slip by without some education tucked in amongst the fun! We are going to go to Assateague and stop at the new Visitor's Center to look at the displays and enjoy the Touch Pool where we can pick up crabs and other sea life and get some "upcloseandpersonal" time. We'll walk along the shore and I'll remind him of our aquarium visit the other day when we stopped at the Atlantic Coastal Shore tank and saw what life looks like under the water where we will be standing today. I think we will walk along some trails and through the trees to see if we can scout out some wildlife and hopefully we'll be lucky enough to see some of the wild horses that never cease to amaze us. Of course we will walk up onto the beach, searching for shells and wishing the water wasn't too cold to dip our toes in and I hope we will come across some sea life that we can talk about and possibly take home to add to our ever growing collection of (junk)...treasure :-)
Afterward, we are looking at fun only when we head to the boardwalk for games and Thrasher's French Fries, but Earth Day will not be a total dud. After all, what better place to celebrate the Earth than here at the beach, with such beautiful sights all around us!
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