Beach memories . . . .

So while we were at the beach we absolutely did all our favorite things -- things we do every year. For my sister and me, this involved books. And maybe a magazine or two but mostly books. And we weren't the only ones -- we are clearly raising our urchins right, because this is a picture that could have been captured most beach days. Every urchin there was deep into something -- from Stardust, to Pillars of the Earth, to Game of Thrones, to a re-reading of the Harry Potter books in preparation for the big movie release, the books were piled up all over our beach house. I personally read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and loved it!

For the sunny girl and her cousins the beach tradition also involved boogie boards, except for the days when they reported that the water was . . . let's see, what was the phrase they used? "W-a-a-y too freakin' cold."

My tall boy wasn't able to make it to the beach this year (he was stuck in a cubicle), so the soldier brought along one of his soldier pals to fill the void. While he's no tall boy, he is cuter than [think of something really cute and he's cuter than that], and funny, and willing to roll with the punches -- even when one of the girl cousins (who might be the sunny girl, not that I'm blaming or anything) spilled lemonade all over him. And dig this: dude wore a different bow tie to dinner every night. Swear to God.

And we had lots to celebrate! A room full of fathers received their Father's Day loot . . .

-- don't judge me because I

used duct tape to wrap my gifts --

. . . and this up-and-coming Wahoo was the man of the hour, since he just graduated from high school.

A new thing we did this year was that we all sat down together one night and read the script of the play, "Dinner at Eight." More about that is coming because it was awesome!

Mostly we stuck to our main family tradition, which is to spend as much time together as possible with the people we love most in the world.