Our Day of Summer (yeah, "day" singular)

Those of you who know me on Facebook may have noticed that I've been a weensy bit whiny about our weather this summer. Just a tad. And those of you who live out of state probably wonder why in hell anyone would voluntarily live in Maine. Well, just to be clear, the big payoff of living in a state with four months of winter and six months without leaves on the trees, is that our summers are usually PERFECT. Usually. Notsomuch this year when we've had two solid months of rain, rain, rain, with the occasional day of drizzle, just to mix it up a little. And just when you think you can't possibly handle anymore? Then you get a day of pouring deluge and localized flooding just to screw with your already tenuous mental health.

Yesterday, we finally got perfect summer weather. As soon as we verified that the forecast sunny 85 degrees was becoming reality (you understand if we tend to be suspicious of forecasts for anything other than 65 degrees and rain), Tom and I tossed kids, boogie boards, and a picnic into the van and headed for Popham Beach.

And it was PERFECT:

The girls boogie-boarded all afternoon, paused only to eat dinner with us on the picnic blanket, and then went right back into the ocean until we left at 7:30. Once we got home and showered, they were so exhausted that they actually asked to go to bed.

Bear subscribes to the Fling Yourself Wildly Into the Waves Like a Lemming theory. Although yesterday, she learned that this is also sometimes called the How to Lose Your Bathing Suit Bottoms method. After that, her flinging was slightly less wild.

She likes getting creamed by big waves as much as she does riding the smaller ones.

And while her approach is not always successful (see below):

She usually emerges like this, and heads straight for the next wave:
Bug, as always, prefers the dramatic approach.

And when she is knocked down by a wave? Then rest assured that is was the Hugest and Most Ferocious Wave ever seen in the Atlantic. Such as yesterday, when she surfaced (after four seconds max) out from under a whopper wave, to inform me grimly (with much coughing and illustrative gasping for breath) that "that one nearly drowned me and was trying to pull at me from underneath to carry me out to sea." Then she stalked off to our picnic blanket to shiver in a calculatedly pathetic manner while wrapped in her beach towel. I'm pretty sure that if this is age nine, her teen years are going to kill me. Luckily, she knows how to work the cute.

As for this man?He's cute, too, but right now's he's lucky that he's the sole wage earner in this family. I seriously considered leaving him at the beach when I was flipping through the digital display on my camera and noticed that he had taken several photos of me. From behind. IN MY BATHING SUIT.

There are no words. Well, there's one. It's called "delete."