Part 2: We couldn't skip the beach

Day 3 of our quick beach trip … continued from "Part 1: We couldn't skip the beach"

I again didn’t sleep well, and just before my alarm was set to go off, I thought maybe we’d just skip the sunrise and stay in bed. Soon after, Sawyer’s eyes popped open and he said, “Are we going to see the sun?”

We through jackets over our pajamas, quietly shut car doors and drove to the beach parking lot, which held only a handful of vehicles belonging to hopeful fishermen, dedicated beach walkers and a couple other photographers.









The clouds had returned, making photographs a lot darker than I had expected. And figured I would never get any good shots without a tripod. Sawyer only wanted to run around, too. So it was a challenge to keep any kind of zen that a sunrise on the beach would normally elicit. When the sun finally poked through the clouds though, he was awed. He stopped running long enough to comment on how beautiful it was twice.















When the sun was fully in the sky and the last traces of darkness had disappeared, we hiked back to the car to change into the beach outfit I wanted for Sawyer’s “portrait session.” By then, it was warm enough that I didn’t worry about him freezing, but I don’t think he stood still long enough to get cold.
The two hours of photo-taking — certainly our longest — involved me sitting in the dry sand with my finger on the shutter as he ran circles around me, giggling, hair flying … anything but posing.



















I had warned him not to get in the water, but after an hour of shooting and feeling like I probably had a couple good shots, I gave up keeping him out of it. It was like holding back a moth from a flame. The shoes came off, and the little feet hit the surf. I don’t think he intended to get wet, but a rogue wave crashed into his shorts and he looked at me with such surprise and alarm, that I could only laugh. I told him he could get as wet as he wanted.































He splashed in the water, rolled around in the sand and chased birds for an hour or more. By the time we left, a solid three to four hours had passed. We returned to the campground, got Sawyer cleaned up and took down the tent. Our friend Ginger and her family were already gone.

It was a long drive home, but it was a worthwhile trip. I sometimes get too caught up in feeling like I HAVE to do things, especially when it’s a tradition we’ve started. We went other places this summer, so it’s not like we never leave our house. I know there will be traditions that we eventually drop. And there may be times when we choose traveling to new places instead of ones we’ve been to a dozen times. But the beach thing is something Sawyer loves — and when it’s a tradition he expects, it’s one that I going to try hard to keep running.

For more on my photo-taking endeavors, check out "The quest for a selfie"