The morning arrived in our house with a thud.  It'd been a long night.  One that included turns of wakefulness, leaving mama sleepless from 1am to 6am, with a short nap after that.

9am arrived with me staring at my two littlies grumpily with a long day stretching out ahead of us.  Looking out the window with a sigh, I noticed something remarkable.  The sun.  It was here.

"Ellis, grab your bucket and spade" I said "We're going to the beach"

I scrambled around, getting the things we could need and loaded it into our new (to us) car*. After various false starts for forgotten things, we were off to the coast.

Georgia cried the whole way (my babies hate cars) and Ellis talked endlessly about boats and whales and ice cream and other things we were going to do once we reached the Firth of Forth.

When we got there, the beach was dry and bright and sunny and cold...but perfect.  Exactly what we needed.  Georgia liked digging in the sand with her little hands and sleeping on my back in the fresh sea air.  Ellis liked chasing the waves.  And the ice cream. I liked just being there with the two of them, the sea used to be just a dream for a girl in Iowa.

A few hours cleared our heads and brought us back to a place more human. We bundled up into the car and headed home.  Ellis sleeping, me singing at the top of my lungs to stop Georgia crying.