what did you do for the first day of summer?

i have an inner battle with the lack of tidy-ness in my house and my need to run away from it ...

spring cleaning is supposed to be done in the spring - otherwise it would be called whatever-season-you're-in cleaning! summer is for playing and swimming and going to the library and being outside ... not inside cleaning up the mess we call home.

so ... the first day of summer vacation happened to fall on the first day of summer this year and i woke up on the wrong side of not enough sleep - just a little grouchy ... okay a lot grouchy. i stormed through the house shouting orders and threats that i wasn't going to follow thru on and generally griped my way through the morning. i managed to clean the hall bathroom and the boys room 'all by myself - even though i wasn't the one who made the mess' ... and then alicia called. if you know her, you love her and know that she has nearly perfect solutions to most parenting problems and isn't afraid to call you out when you're wrong. she challenged me to take my family and get outside and play on the first day of summer and she promised that it would be the best thing i could do for myself and my family - and what's more ... she said, "i can't wait to hear all about it!" in her cheery/borderline-demanding-a-report voice. so we did it. andy was home for the day and we packed in everybody and headed to mukilteo beach/ferry dock. we had just missed low tide when we arrived but the specialists were still there and happy to show us some fun sea-life. we are happy to report that we had a fun time and no one died - which was a definite possibility if we would have stayed home!

{also, we are happy that we weren't trying to take the ferry anywhere since the ferry holding line was three-quarters of the way up the hill (over an hour wait) on our way down to the beach and all the way up the hill and spilling out of the holding area on our way headed home!}

here's what we did: