With swimming and the beach comes the oh so fun swim suit hunt. Uggghhhh. Well at least my options have been naturally narrowed down for me. The fact that I’ve had two kids causing stretch marks that rival the stripes of a Burmese tiger…. bikinis are out. I’m also not a huge fan of one pieces because, more often than not, they hug the wrong spot the wrong way, although there are a few that work really well I don’t always feel like trying on 50 to find that 1 that works. The safest bet for me is what I like to call the momkini (it’s actually a tankini but let’s face it, it’s a mom’s best friend).
Along with the bathing suit problem the beach also brings the sand problem. I hate sand almost as much as I hate chalk and for those of you that know me that’s a lot. (I won’t even touch chalk, I will touch sand so that’s why I say “almost”) Sand is the worst. It gets everywhere, I will try to sit as neatly on my towel as possible and yet somehow it finds a way to get cover my entire body, not only that, but it finds it’s way home with me which drives me INSANE. It gets all over the car, tracked into the house, stuck to the floor of the bathtub, in little piles in the bedroom. It’s like glitter but without the pretty factor.
Vacations bring tons of fun but they also bring 6+ hours in the car with two children (and a dog) asking how much longer. We used to have dvd players but after going through our 4th set I decided I was done. I was bored as a kid driving to our vacation spot, my kids can be too, but lets face it I’m basically shooting myself in the foot for making this decision. No dvd players = triple the amount of “how much longers.”
No school is great my only issue is that I seem to have lost all since of time during the day. I’ll get on the computer to work on a few projects and the next thing I know Caleb’s walking in the door. (Crap, I haven’t even thought about dinner, and we all know my 30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray isn’t going to help me at all) This part of summer is by no means terrible it’s just that I need to find my own will power to stop watching Bat Dad videos and make sure I get done what needs to get done in the house.
Heat. I hate heat and summer brings tons of it. I’m pretty hot natured to begin with so summer often makes me feel like I’m sitting in a crockpot that’s sitting in an oven. In the winter you can add layers until you reach a comfortable temperature, you can’t do this in the summer, you can only get a certain amount of naked before people start judging you. I already sweat more than I feel a normal person should on a mild day therefore during the summer you best believe I wear black all the time so that sweat doesn’t show. I also wear a lot of skirts/ dresses and people always ask why I’m so dressed up…. I’m not it’s just that wearing any kind of pants in this kind of heat makes me feel like Ross in the “Leather Pants” episode of Friends. I’m afraid at some point of the day I will no longer be able to pull my pants back up after using the restroom.
The worst part of summer… the sun. The sun is my nemesis.(all you pale ladies know what I’m talking about) No matter what I do I will get burnt and not just kind of burnt we‘re talking lobster status. I could be sitting under an umbrella lathered in sunscreen and someway somehow it would still happen. My skin does not tan, if you think I look darker, you should look closer, if you did you’d notice that it’s not tan it’s just a darker shade of red. Sometimes the red isn’t as noticeable, other times I’m burnt to the point that people will literally stop me just to tell me that my sun burn looks painful (yeah thanks guys, I had no idea how painful it was until you pointed it out). The sun HATES me but that’s ok the feelings are mutual.
Even with all of this I will still be very involved with summer activates because there are a few things that make it worth it, I love watching my girls running and jumping off the diving board, or making sand castles in the sand. I love the smiles on their faces when they find the perfect sea shell or they’ve done their first underwater handstand. I even kind of love my husband playfully shooting me with the water gun. Therefore, you’ll see me out there, just look for the lobster in the black tankini sweating profusely while sitting under the umbrella…..
