The first beach day of the season

A few weeks ago, on a hot, sunny Saturday, our family of three packed up and headed to the beach (for us, Lake Michigan sand dunes) in the morning. We parked, walked a ways to where it was less crowded, and laid out our quilt.

So early in the season, the water was around fifty degrees, the kind of chilly where even just dipping your toes in cools off your entire body.

We spent the morning playing in the sand, picking up rocks (Cooper), skipping rocks (Nicholas), and wading into the water until we got brave enough to face the chilliness and go deeper. We snacked and ate lunch, drank water, reapplied sunscreen, and inadvertently ate some sand.

Nicholas brought Cooper up to the top of a dune and then they ran down, he took a video with our new GoPro camera (Cooper's face is priceless, such joy).

And as we neared naptime, Cooper rested his head on my shoulder, and Nicholas carried him as we headed back to the car, home from our first full beach day of the season.

We're looking forward to making good use of our annual parks pass. More beach days, sunshine, picnic lunches, and swimming ahead.

P.S. — my family visited from Minnesota this past weekend and we had an early birthday celebration for Cooper! I'll write a post about that soon :)