Summer at the Beach

“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.” 

Maud Hart Lovelace

In the long year since I've been gone, we actually moved to a new house. I haven't spoken about it anywhere, established blogs or otherwise, so I haven't had the chance to really get into the bittersweet event it was, to leave the house we thought would be our forever home, and make a new one, all in the course of a few weeks. But it was something that needed to be done, to put others' needs before our own. It was difficult, but we hope to be able to return to our Paradise House someday soon. It wasn't the best house for us, in terms of space (where we live now is much more spacious) but it was a house that had a lot of promise and dreams attached to it... with a lot of pain, now that I think of it, especially that last year, but nonetheless it remains a promise full of hope and we trust God for it's fulfillment. But I won't go into that here! Not yet anyway.

The house we moved to is just a hop, skip, and a boat ride away from the beach. (And by that, I mean a five minute drive. Wonderful, no?) So that's where we spent the majority of our summer. The boys taught themselves how to crab and even caught a few. We also (unsuccessfully) tried fishing.
Here are a few pictures to commemorate the adventures ♥



Look how big my little humdinger got! He's nearly eleven now - my sisterly heart could burst *sobs*

They found a whole little world of hermit crabs on this particular day and wanted to show me all of them. Pictured are the youngest of my brothers, including the baby of the family, who is just three and a half.



And here's a favorite of mine: the last glimpse of the sun on the dock and quiet waters right before we packed up our fishing supplies to head home.

And there you have it, a small tribute to our quiet, beach-filled summer which featured plenty of the smiling faces belonging to people that I'm privileged to call my family ♥

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 

1 John 4:9-11