Today is the last day of our summer vacation with my daughter and her family. They come from Michigan for a week of beach time and family time once a year. My husband takes the time off from his stressful job as a college administrator, my engineer son-in-law puts aside his hectic schedule in the auto industry, my daughter leaves behind her role as driver of the Mom Mobile, ferrying her daughters back and forth from swim and gymnastic practices, orthodontist appointments, and numerous other tasks that take up her entire day, leaving her no time for herself, and I cease my worrying about trying to get yet another blog post off and replying to comments and e-mails. My daughter and her family come here to relax and regroup before returning to the exigencies of life that make up their lives the rest of the year.
An ominous black cloud hovers over the Oceanfront, the storm at sea making huge waves perfect for body surfing and boogie boarding. My daughter and nine-year-old granddaughter build a sand castle on the shore, but it is too close to the incoming tide, and the churning water ravages the walls like an angry marauder. They build another castle further from the water, but it, too, is swamped. Building sand castles takes the perfect balance of wetness to hold the sand together, but not so close to the ocean that the waves overwhelm it. Today is not a good day for sand castle building.
Tomorrow my daughter and her sweet family will take to the road again for the fourteen-hour drive home from Virginia Beach to Michigan. Monday morning their busy routines will begin again as will my husband’s. I will put the house back in order, pausing to hear the echoes of laughter that rang in our house this week. The secret, though, is to keep that balance in life, that summer spirit, not letting day-to-day living overwhelm us and destroy what we try so hard to build.
Coming East 
The yellow smiley face is very easy. All you have to do is leave a space after any text you’ve typed and then type a colon immediately followed by a curved right bracket. I’m going to do one with a space between the colon and bracket so that it – hopefully – won’t turn into a smiley face
: ) Also, on WordPress.com your blog needs to be set to show smileys as graphics, which yours obviously is!
To do a winking one, type a semi-colon followed by the right curved bracket,and for an unhappy face, type a colon followed by a left curved bracket.
Hope that helps! 😉
Thanks, Val, but I think it would be so much easier if you would just pop right into my place in Virginia Beach and show me all these things I don’t know how to do. It’s another scorcher today, so I’ll make a pitcher of iced tea. 🙂
Lovely that you had the time together. 🙂
Something for you here, in my current post.
Wow, Val! Thanks a bunch for mentioning me! I still can’t figure out how to right click without a mouse and using a Macbook. I still need to post the Versatile Blogger Award picture, and now I want to post the No Rules Award picture, but I’m hopeless. Again, thanks tons for your mentioning me.
You’re welcome. And as far as I know, with a ‘Mac, you have to use the Control key plus a left click of the mouse, so presumably without a mouse use the control key while you tap?
An alternative if you’ve got something simple with which you can edit (ie crop) an image, is just to use the print screen key with shift. As far as I know all keyboards have a key, it’s usually on the top row of your keyboard to the right. Might say something like ‘Prt Scr’. Just hold down shift at the same time as the print screen key while you’ve got what you want to copy on the screen. Paste it straight into any document that will take images, save to your computer and upload as normal after that. Hope that helps. 🙂
I should have asked my daughter to show me while she was here, but now it’s too late. I will try your suggestions and see what happens. I don’t even know how to make that yellow smiley face!
I know how you feel CE – we just finished a week of vacay withour family. Not at our house, but we gathered at a cottage in northern Michigan. My husband, youngest son and I traveling from our Michigan home, oldest son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter from Colorado. It was a great week, but bittersweet. Oldest son and family are ready to start making their own family vacation traditions, so it could be our last one. Hope you had a great one.
Why do things have to change? When we moved to Virginia, we had to stop spending Christmas with our daughter and her family because they continue to go to Texas to see her husband’s folks. So last year we drove up to Boston to spend Christmas with our two sons and our daughter-in-law and her family. We’re making new traditions, but it is hard. I had to tell myself that Christmas is just a day and we’ll see them another time.
I’m glad you enjoyed your visit. Your family sounds wonderful…
It was such a nice visit, and the kids (including the biggest one, my son-in-law) loved the beach. They just left and it is too quiet here.
Your words flow so sweetly as you speak of your precious family. So glad you had this time together.
Thanks, Julie. They just left to return to Michigan, a soft rain is falling, and I’m missing them already.