nsb 2015.

Both our husbands were traveling for work this week, so Shari and I hit the road on our own Monday for a few days at New Smyrna Beach in Florida. Our longtime friends, the Phillips, have been so kind to share their family’s beach house with us for 20 years of vacations now. I’ve loved introducing each of my children to this McWilliams tradition, and this year was two-for-one with Gabe and Noah!

After my sob-story post last week you may have been a little nervous about me taking yet another road trip, but let me tell you what: this week was exactly what I needed. It was what we all needed.

I sat in the sand on Monday afternoon, the warm Florida waves splashing my toes, my big kids shrieking happily in the water with their cousins, Gabe shoveling sand onto my legs, and Noah sitting next to me singing and inspecting shells and I thought, Yes, this is it. This is being a mom.

Of course it is all the other things too: the hard work and routine and consistency and discipline. But it’s also the quiet pleasure of just being with your children. The joy you feel in watching their joy. It’s the lifetime of sweet memories, which temper the hard times. And because I just met Gabriel and Noah eight weeks ago, we have such a small amount of those memories. We’re starting from scratch.

But the beach this week added to the store house. It was the spark of hope I needed to see that the store house will keep growing.

I’m thankful for our family and for Tricia, who love all four of my children and helped make this week possible for us. I’m thankful for long, oft-interrupted chats with Shari in the van. I’m thankful for the beach, which never fails to make us all happy. I’m thankful that Gabe and Noah instantly loved it as much as the rest of us do, for a visit from my cousin Allison and her family and from my uncle Mark, for Dad’s homemade ice cream, and kids who slept through the night, for episodes of Tiny House Hunting with my mom and Shari, and a minivan that somehow squeezed in all 8 of us and our stuff.

It was a lovely week.