One more week

Exactly one week from today, I'll be sitting in the sand with my toes in the Atlantic Ocean.  I cannot wait to have the North Carolina sun (yes, it's different from the one in Kansas) on my shoulders and an ice cold drink in my hand.  Of course, the drink will be Maya's water bottle (which she won't set down in fear that sand *gasp* will get on it), but whatever!  I'll gladly trade sangria on my back deck for water on the beach.

This summer has flown by, despite each day seeming to last forever.  I cannot believe that, once we get back from NC, there will only be about four more weeks until school starts.  Only twenty eight more days of "I'm bored.  There's nothing to do.", "Mama, she stole my marble!", "Can we please go somewhere!", "When is it not gonna be so hot?", "Mama!... Mama?... Mama?!...... nothing.".

One more thing (to add to the long list) that they don't tell you before you become a stay-at-home parent:  As much as your heart will break the first time you drop them off at school, it breaks almost as much when you have three months of summer "break" stretched out before you.  Like the long dark hallway leading to the electric chair.  You can practically feel your hair graying and your nerves fraying.  At least, that's how it is for me.  I suppose I could be alone on this one.

But, one week from today, we will have survived two lllooonnnggg days in the car together (* hopefully).  We will have woken up in "our" beach house, had breakfast on the top deck where we can hear the waves, slathered on the sunscreen, and walked the three minutes to the sand.  The girls will have thrown off their flip flops and raced up to the top of the hill to be the first to see the water (and two of them will be whining that they weren't actually the first).  I will be trailing behind (like their personal pack mule) lugging all of our supplies and taking a million pictures.  And it will all be worth it.  Because my girls will be happy.  They will have a million things to do.  They will not whine or argue (* of course, the sound of the waves crashing drowns out the specific decibel level of their unpleasantness anyway). 

It will be amazing. 

Or, the next time my toes are in the Atlantic ocean and my derriere is in the sand, the ice cold drink I have in my hand will be a water bottle filled with a mojito - and Maya can hold her own damn agua.