Beach Baby, Beach Baby (sing along...)

We took our beach trip.  It was such a relief.  Working from home is both phenomenal and total poop at the same time.  It is a strange sensation to have your work be something that you love to do and do from home in the same room that your family eats burritos and colors pictures of dinosaurs (side note:  these coloring books are the most fantastic coloring books!).  Designing and sewing and drawing are the top three things I would choose to do with free time and I already do them constantly, so it's pretty essential for me to force myself to do other things and carve out some special time for my family that is out of our little house/studio(s). 

I can already tell my son is developing his home-body chops, just like ma and pa.  There is nothing he loves more than staying at home and playing with toys.  The other day I surprised him with some batman pajamas and he asks really sweetly if he can put them on as soon as he comes home.  I better never introduce him to a Snuggy.  What I am trying to say is that it is really good and healthy for us to drive away from home every once in a while and sleep in a hotel or on a friend's floor.  This time it was a hotel in a casino!  I thought it would be really sparkly and glitzy, or at least tacky in a delightful way, but really it was just boringly sophisticated.  Should I write a review on Travelocity?  "I was expecting more velvet paintings and framed photographs of Elvis.  What a disappointment!".

The actual town itself will charm your socks off.  It was so darn cute.  There is a folk artist from there who started painting in her 60's.  We went to see her paintings at the visitor's center and the nice lady working there gave us $40 to spend in the town!  They had won some sort of grant and they wanted to give the money from it to their tourists so they printed out their own special currency for the town called Magnolia Bucks.  We felt like royalty.  We had ice cream.  Three times!  That's what kings and queens do in a Southern, Mississippi beach town.

We splashed around the ocean for a good while.  Something about shallow ocean water makes me want to do cartwheels and handstands.  

Walter really liked splashing while running.  It was his first time experiencing it, really.  I always wonder at the stamina children have to do the same thing over and over, like running through water. I have to remember that it is brand new to them!  That is the very nice thing about having a child:  they make things new again.

We had pizza and beer at a place called the Ugly Pirate.  The inside looked like what a pirate ship would look like.  Plus we smelled of the ocean, so it was a multi-sensory experience! 

Thank you Bay St. Louis!