Beach Pics V: Meggie

Our passionate little girl just loves the beach. She plays so hard, for so long, every time we hit the sand, and she's the least likely of all the kids to sit down for anything other than a quick snack. She just goes and goes and goes. Consequently, on several evenings during the trip, she almost fell asleep at the dinner table. On the day we left the Outer Banks she went into mourning, and when we finally arrived home, she broke down completely, sobbed all through dinner, and finally just had to be put to bed.

These two capture Meg in motion at the beach house. They're blurry, but I can't resist them; she was so cute this afternoon, when Nana did her hair up.

Crazy Girl does have an emerging reflective side though, as demonstrated by these few shots and the story below.

On our last full day of vacation, Meg begged to take a picnic dinner down to the beach with us. We had done this once before, and she loved it. It turned out that the last evening was quite windy, and since everyone had been in the water, we were all cold when the sun began to set. As our picnic got underway and the kids ate their sandwiches, everyone began slipping home by two's for one reason or another--warm shower, early bedtime, potty.

Finally, just Meg and I were left, in our damp bathing suits and hoodies, chilled but too happy to go. Behind us, the sun's last rays were fading; in front of us, a dim moon rose over the ocean. Meg asked me to tell her a story about when I was little. I told her everything I could think of about my own happy childhood trips to the beach with my siblings and parents and grandparents. Far out on the horizon, a little tug hauled a great ship out to sea. We sat there, Meg curled in a beach chair, me stretched out at her feet. We watched the boats and the water and the birds and the clouds until the sky was a deep purple and the moon cast its silver reflection bright on the water. Then we shook out our blanket and folded our chair and headed for home.

It was possibly one of the sweetest evenings of my whole life, the kind I hope I never forget.