A Day at the Beach?

I’ll tell you a shameful little secret I’ve been keeping for the past 9 years. I live close to the beach, but I hardly ever go. There. I said it. I feel better.

Now, why would a girl, born and raised just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the beach – a girl who’s best childhood memories are of splashing in the waves, digging big holes in the sand, and meandering along the Santa Barbara shoreline – almost never take her kids to the beach?

In theory, a day at the beach sounds like it should be fun, and it probably was for my kids, but for me it was just whole lotta work disguised as fun. In reality, a day at the beach was a day of blood, sweat, and tears (literally.)

A typical beach day for us kind of broke down like this:

Fun beach day preparation = 1 hour

Lathering up the kids with sunscreen (includes chasing them down) = ½ hour

Packing car, lugging crap to the beach, and setting everything up = 1 hour

Chasing beach umbrella as it flies away in the wind, cleaning sand out of eyes & mouths, walking back and forth to the bathroom, catching kids to reapply sunscreen, and rescuing them from the big wave rinse cycles = 3+ hours

Convincing everyone it’s time to go = 1 hour

Collecting sand toys from up and down the beach = ½ hour

Re-packing and lugging crap back to the car = ½ hour

Cleaning tar off all 6 of our feet, and our bathing suits = 1 hour

De-sanding children = 1 hour

Cleaning bathroom after de-sanding children = 1 hour

Vacuuming out car = ½ hour

Washing the gritty suits, towels, etc. = 1 hour

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Total time investment for “fun” beach day = 12 hours

So, there you have it. My big, embarrassing secret is finally out of the bag. It’s shocking really, isn’t it? But, before you go feeling too sorry for my kids, things have been looking up for them the past year or so, now that they’ve turned the corner from helpless little sea anemones to full-fledged surf rats. Now that they’re a little older, they can live without all the sand toys and the nutritional lunch. And they’ll survive if they swallow a little sand or sea water. And when it’s time to go, they know they’ll have to walk home if they don’t come running.

So when Spring break broke out the wow-busting warm sunny days this past week, we went to the beach. And it was really fun. For all of us.