Ultimate Summer : Beach

Monday 

“Hold on a second, Ollie.” I pull Harper’s shoes off, which are already too small. I throw her on my hip, grab the overdue book, and head inside for story time. Ollie recognizes a kid from VBS, but doesn’t yell loud enough to be heard by him and his mom.

Miss Jessica, the librarian, welcomes us into the conference room and shuts the door since Harper has a reputation of being quite the explorer in the library. 

Ollie gets over the awkwardness of not having other friends there and sings along with the songs and listens to the stories about beaches. Harper decides Miss Jessica needs help reading. 

The books we read are about the beach. That decides the rest of our week.

Wednesday 

“Mommy, Harper wants to be outside!” Ollie runs over to me as I am filling up a tub of water  

“It’s okay, y’all play in the backyard while I get this beach set up.”

Harper waddles over to the mud puddle and sits down in it, inspiring Ollie to also cover himself in mud.

I collect all of our buckets and shovels and throw it on the pile of sand I got from Lowe’s and move the kids from the pile of mud to the pile of sand. 

“We’re at the beach!”

“We’re at the beach?”

“Well, we are going to pretend we’re at the beach because we don’t live near the ocean… but we’re going to make sand castles.”

My son doesn’t need any more encouragement and remembers from doing this last year that we need water added to the sand in order for it to mold to the buckets. 

 

Harper wants to have a fully immersive experience, so she puts two inches of sand in the bottom of the tub and then sits in it.

I get tickled by how much fun my kids are having, and start giggling thinking of what we must look like to our neighbors. 

Friday 

Ollie holds up his arms as I spray him with sunscreen. He giggles and tells me it tickles and jumps up and down trying to hasten time so he can run into the lake. 

Finally, I walk Harper into the lake while Ollie belly crawls through the murky water. Harper plops down on the edge of the water and covers her legs with mud.

While I’m sitting with her, Aaron is keeping an eye on Ollie from the shore as Aaron is grossed out by the whole experience and decides he’s more of an ocean person. 

Harper eventually moves on to putting mud on my legs. I look up and I see a clump of mud coming in for a landing on my arm. 

While the mud is still airborne, I time travel to 1995 hearing my mom tell me not to get her hair wet as we are swimming in a creek in Bandera, TX. 

Coming back to the present, I pick up mud and return the favor to Ollie, who assumes since Harper could put mud on mommy, he could too. We have a full on mud fight. I manage to keep Harper from getting pelted, although she does end up  with droplets all over her face.

Aaron is still on the shore being grossed out by the whole experience.

Eventually, the war ends as a clump of mud hits Ollie in the face with a thump, knocking him off balance. His face looks like a black and white cookie.

I can’t help but laugh while I apologizing to Ollie. He lets me know that he did not like that. And reminds me of it several times throughout the evening. 

 

Before and after the mud war of ‘22.

Saturday 

“Bake in the oven!”

“Bake in oven!”

I push the record button on my phone and wonder how many of these “baking with a Oliver” videos we have made. I put the sand dollar cookies in the oven and go to the kitchen table where Ollie is rolling out the dough for the cookies. I sneak another bite of dough in my mouth, and get some more cookies ready for the oven. 

We watch a video about sand dollars and try the cookies. Ollie says they are good, but he says that about every dessert. I personally think it taste like sand which is on brand for the week.