Wastin’ away here in SaugatuckyVille….

Bad spin off… but it just kind of came to mind as the band at dinner was singing their Saugatuck rendition of Margaritaville.   

Today we headed over to the beach… the great beach of Lake Michigan.  We haven’t made it there for a weekend yet, and I was really missing our carefree, laid back, relaxing weekends camping on the coast.  I don’t know why we never do day trips, as Saugatuck, South Haven and even Holland are less than 2.5 hours away.  Heck, we can even go to our beloved Silver Lake in 3 hours… gosh I can’t even remember the last time we went to Silver Lake… we need to go for the weekend as I know Porter will die seeing all the dune trucks.  Anyway, going for a day is so do-able, and with camping rates nearing $40 a night, its something we’ll try to do a few times a summer in addition to camping.

Anyway, we didn’t get to the beach until noon, and by then Porter was hungry and even acting a bit tired.  We decided to rearrange our schedule (beach, lunch, shop while P naps in stroller, beach, dinner, home) and have lunch, then walk around downtown Saugatuck and check out the shops, walk the boardwalk and see all the boats in the marina, all while Porter naps.  Well, Porter was on some kind of nap strike, even though he was SO tired. It was near impossible to go in shops with him… when the stroller stopped moving he got so cranky.  So, we lapped downtown oh I don’t know how many times, and about an hour later he finally passed out, only to sleep about half an hour. 

He woke up cranky, so we just decided to head to Oval Beach and hopefully the excitement of the beach would put him in a good mood.  And it did.  He had a blast with the water and sand.  Even though the water was a limb numbing 52*, he braved the cold and went in up to his waist.  We built a big sand hill and Porter spent about half an hour crawling up it and sliding down.  Clean- up was not so fun… sand was stuck on his face, in his hair, caked with sunscreen and water and sand and strawberry juice… yuck.  Oh well, thats the price you pay for a day at the beach I guess.

Then we headed to the Corner Bar at Coral Gables and ate outside on the harbor and listened to live music.  Very relaxing and fun. 

We made it home in just 2 hours (who knows how!) and Porter didn’t sleep a wink (Heather, are our kids playing mind readers again???) We left at 7pm and stopped by Cathy and Dave’s (Ry’s parents) on the way through town at 9pm and Porter was still wound up.

So, anyway, here are pictures… I’m sure the most interesting point of the post.  Don’t get too excited… I didn’t take my good camera to the beach, and honestly I didn’t take many pictures at ALL today.  I kind of disappointed myself.  In a way I’m trying to step back and just enjoy these moments and stop worrying about "documenting" them so much… and then in a way I’m feeling like I’m dropping back and losing my creativity and excitement to try to create and capture these memories.  I did take my point and shoot to the beach, obviously wanted pictures of P in the water, but I really didn’t feel like dealing with sand and $3000 worth of camera equipment, and dinking with all my settings to get things right.  So, point and shoot on AUTO *GASP* it was. 

By the way, these pics are totally doctored up with some actions, not that they make the pictures any better, but I guess it kind of masks the horrid bad photos HAHA!

 

 

 

And, at dinner I told Ry I was kind of disappointed in myself that I didn’t document our day like I’d have liked to.  He said he was proud of me for not using my camera so much (he actually got so irritated at the beach that I was taking so many pics of Porter… BLEH).  Well, the beach pictures were really all I had.  The downtown was SO cool, and there were so many spots that would have been neat for pictures, but of course with a crabby hubby and cranky tired toddler, that wasn’t happening.  Anyway, we took a couple pics of ourselves in the park just before we left at the end of the day… can you tell Porter is just DONE?