"Vacation" revisited
Slipper snails hitching a ride on a moon snail. August 2024. Almost three years ago, I endured one of the least restful "vacations" of my life. My husband and I thought we were being clever when we booked a mid-fall beach trip with our then-toddler and newborn, but it turned out we spent two weeks living "a corrupted version of our regular life, only with less childcare and more sand." The time was so interminable, so exhausting, so the opposite of refreshing and renewing, that we have not attempted a full beach trip since. That is, until now. This year, with a rising kindergartner and a toddler, we closed out August with a solid week of incontrovertible summer fun. This trip had everything: perfect sunny weather, gorgeous beach views, evening ice cream trips, shoreline nature discoveries ... all with children who use real toilets, eat regular food, sleep in adult-sized beds, and know how to (occasionally) entertain themselves. The circumstances were certainly more
