And Just Like That Life Got Better!

I have had a series of very, very difficult days this past week, prompted by a FaceTime call with our granddaughter, where for the first time in a long, long time she didn't talk about all the things she looked forward to doing the next time she visited. That broke my heart into about a million little pieces, and set off a cascade of emotions that consumed me for days. My spirits would lift during our outside activities, but would crash again quickly upon our return to the house.

I can live without travel, entertainment venues, restaurants, and large social gatherings. I can not, however, live without seeing my youngest daughter and granddaughters, far away from us on the east coast currently.

So this past week my husband and I were discussing just how we might be able to get to them without imperiling our lives, or theirs; primarily by flying out, either together or one at a time, for a prolonged visit. But we continued to vacillate, because summoning up enough energy to do the Metro DC area in the summer is rough. With everything in the area still closed, there is literally nowhere to go to escape the heat. Even the HOA swimming pool in my daughter's development is currently closed. Still, we were getting closer and closer to throwing caution to the winds, and booking flights back anyway.

Happily, joyously, we received a call from my youngest daughter yesterday while, ironically, we were walking at the beach and seeing families encamped everywhere with happy, sand and ocean playing children. She was desperate to get out of her town over the summer in that her husband will be deployed until September, and wanted to know if we were still open to having her and our granddaughters visit for a month in July. She had decided to drive out with the girls and her au pair, and turn the cross country trip into a road vacation, both coming and going. 

So just like that, my world flipped. Instead of feeling increasingly forlorn about not seeing our 5 and 2 year old granddaughters, we will be spending four weeks with them here. And there are already so very many things we'll be able to do with them, even if nothing else comes online between now and then. All of our local wilderness parks have reopened, our beaches remain open, and some of our beach parking is coming back online. I envision our days as starting off with a morning trip to a local, nature or wilderness park, home for lunch, then off to the beach down the road for an afternoon of fun in the sun. Once home from the beach, both girls should be ready for baths to get all that sand off, and then good to slow it down a bit and enjoy whatever is left of the day playing with the many things we have here for them to do. 

Plus there is cooking and baking together, campouts here in our back yard, outdoor movie theater nights where we can turn the upstairs TV out toward our balcony and huddle together out there, cookouts in the yard over the firepit, backyard games we can set up, water fountains, and an inflatable pool with lots of watertoys.

We are also going to make RV reservations at open and nearby Newport Dunes, which qualifies more as glamping than camping, however both girls will love it's proximity to the beach, and simply by bringing our trailer, will consider it an authentic camping experience. It also has the added benefit of being close enough to our home to allow their mom to drive back and forth with the two year old, who is likely to young to overnight with us and her sister at the resort.

My oldest daughter lives in a nearby coastal town as well, so there will be trips over there to BBQ and enjoy beach time. And I'm sure my youngest daughter will be taking the girls to their old home in San Diego County to visit friends as well, ensuring everyone gets some needed breaks from each other.

So even if nothing else comes back online, we'll be fine. And if it does? Well, great, we'll take it! But either way, it's going to be noisy, it's going to be chaotic, and it's going to be messy, but we can not wait.

And just like that, life got better.