Winter is Officially Over! as evidenced by my sunburn

When you make your first trip to the beach for the summer season, then Winter is officially over! We went yesterday and the weather was perfect for beach bumming! Sunny and warm and beautiful! There were sailboats on the horizon, kites in the air, kids in the water and sandcastles on the beach. What a wonderful way to start off the summer! Er, Spring. Whatever, they're all kind of the same around here.


Apparently, I have to relearn how to apply sunscreen. How do I forget this every year? Maybe the level of difficulty in this task is just something I have yet to master.

1. Remember to bring sunscreen along
2. Squeeze lotion into hand
3. Rub it around to all exposed spots.

Sure sounds easy enough. Surprisingly, it's a complicated process. First of all, where is the sunscreen from last year? Didn't we have 8 bottles of it? I found one and brought it along, it was SPF 60. No sun can penetrate this stuff! Till the teen says, "60?! Maaaaawwwwmmmmm!" Ok, you got me, she's not a teen anymore, she's 21. But I still call the big girls "the teens". I'll figure it out someday. So, we stopped at Target for sunscreen with a more reasonable SPF number so that some sunrays could get through and tan up the pale tall one. Besides that, she needed new flip flops. Now! Ok, so now we've accomplished step number 1. We have sunscreen!

Step two. We're figuring this part out as we sit in the sand with the breeze blowing and the runts kicking up more sand. Why do lotions and everything have that really tough little piece of foil on the top of the bottle under the lid? It's so hard to get off! By the time we get a dollop of lotion in our palms, we also have it mixed with sand. On to step 3.

Rub it around. Easy! I rubbed the 60 lotion on the little fair one, all over. Then the sand stuck to her. All over. She was trying so hard not to get a single grain of sand on her. She wasn't complaining much, but she wasn't thrilled with the beach either. Then I smother her with sticky lotion making her a sand magnet. I tell her, "Sorry honey, it's the beach, there's sand." My 4 yr old can't stop running long enough to get much lotion on. She got a mix of my super sun guard and Katie's light protection. And she just got the spots we could swipe as she ran by. She was already covered with sand, the lotion just made her sand stick to my hands. Blech! Now Katie wants me to put sunscreen on her back, sans sand. I manage. Let's see.... I sunscreened the baby, the kid and the string bean. That's everyone!


Three hours later.... Hey! Did I sunscreen me? Ah, man! I burned the part in my hair, my face and neck. Everything else got some color with just a hint of pink. Today, the pink is faded, I'm just smiling with a tomato face is all. Gracie was pink in spots. Mostly her back because the kid spent a lot of time bent over playing in the sand or looking for seashells and that type of thing. You can see where I actually did get some lotion on her. She isn't burnt enough to notice though. The other two are still pale as can be.

Next time we go to the beach.... I will lotion up the kids from head to toe before I put their swimsuits on them. Then I get the edges that I always miss once they have their suits on. The lotion will sink in and not be all sticky once we get into the sand. And, any extra I put on them while we're at the beach is just extra. I should try to remember me too!

Hopefully, I'll get it right next time. We sure had fun!