Another Day at the Beach

Jude, J.P. and I are on vacation this week.  We're staying in the same house in Santa Rosa Beach that we stayed in last year.  It was kind of nice to be able to plan our vacation without having any questions about where we were staying, how to get there, restaurants, etc.

It's been great to relax, unwind, and just spend a lot of time with J.P.  He's still not too wild about the beach and has no desire to get in the ocean, but he loves the house we're staying in, calling it our "beach house."  In many ways, being here again is so different from last year as it relates to him, because he is talking so much and expressing himself so well.  He actually tells us what he wants to eat or chooses what he wants to do, if we give him options (i.e. playground or beach).

Today, I was up early with him.  Jude got up shortly thereafter and we drove over to Grayton Beach and had breakfast at "Another Broken Egg Cafe."  I'm not a big breakfast eater, but we had a nice meal to start our day.  Afterwards, J.P. enjoyed watching the fish in an small, man-made pond outside Starbucks.  I took a long nap after we got home, while Jude took J.P. to the beach.  The three of us ate lunch together, then I put J.P. down for his nap.  Jude napped, too, while I read Pat Conroy's latest novel, "South of Broad."

J.P. slept for almost three hours, which was nice.  When he woke up, we rushed out to a bike store to rent bikes, before they closed at 5 p.m.  We made it and the bikes are set to be delivered to our house tomorrow morning.  Then, we got ice cream and walked down to the beach.  J.P. was enthralled by the lifeguards, who were closing up shop for the day as we arrived.  Nice fellows, one of them let J.P. climb up the ladder and sit in the lifeguard's chair.  I climbed up behind him and Jude took a couple of photos with her cellphone of the two of us, surveying the beach from our perch.

We got home, had dinner, then played outside for a while.  Soon enough, it was bath time for J.P., then off to bed.  As Jude settled in to work on her jigsaw puzzle, I left for a 5-mile run on the bike path along 30A.  Great run, though it was a little disconcerting running along the bike path in the dark, pitch black in places.  After my run, I took a starlit dip in the swimming pool just out our front door.  Next a shower, a beer and some U.S. Open tennis on TV.

Yep, just another day at the beach.