These are a few of my favorite things (from last week)

 1. My nephew's birthday falls during our beach trip every year and the boys decorate number cookies with my mom. Isabella got to help this year.

 Their creations are always interesting! (my personal favorite is the teddy bears in "floats")

 2. Sharing what are old places to us that are new places to Isabella.

 At the turtle rescue

At Pirate's Landing for dinner

3. Watching Isabella loving spending time with family. It was the first week of her whole life that she was not all that interested in me, unless she had been hurt. She woke up every day saying: George? Mimi? Flower? David?

(My lens would not unfog this afternoon for ANYTHING)

 4. Watching Isabella loving digging in the sand, running in the water, and taking it all in. Sometimes I would just watch her and soak in the moment.

 

5. Watching the sunrise over the ocean. I *almost* slept through it on the last day, but woke up in the middle of a crazy dream, threw on a hat, and headed to the beach.

And I was so glad to be there. And for a nap later in the day.

This morning when Isabella woke up she said beach? I guess she's forgotten the entire day it took us to get home from the beach and that we are very far from the beach now. In my early childhood I lived 45 minutes away from the beach, and I hope to be able to take my kids to a beach every year. We were back to normal this morning- waving to Michael from the window as he heads to work, breakfast then our bible story, grocery store run, laundry, and so on. I'm grateful for both a week away and the return to normal.