One of my favorite things to do with my kids in the summer, is take them to the beach. The best thing about living in Michigan is we are completely surrounded by enormous bodies of fresh water. Not to mention they get quite a bit warmer than the ocean, and there’s no salt, and thankfully no sharks. Ahhhh! Hahaha! Anyway, we go at least twice a month in the summer during June, July, and August. Sometimes even into September if the weather stays nice and the warm water lasts.
I like to expose my kids to different towns and to traveling a little every summer. We go to a new beach every year now that my kids are big enough to swim on their own, and I don’t have to worry about them in the water quite as much. One of my favorite beaches is a secret spot in Saugatuck. If you’ve never been there, you HAVE to go. The town is amazing. All the shops and the people and the restaurants, it’s great! The beach is called Oval Beach. It’s pretty secluded, so it doesn’t get very busy. It has gotten more traffic lately, as more people have been spreading the word, but I definitely still recommend going. That’s not to say that I don’t love the other beaches and towns we’ve been to. There’s Grand Haven, South Haven Beach, Pere Marquette, Saugatuck Dunes, Holland State Park, Mears State Park, and sooo many more. My kids love them all, and so do I.
One of the great things about a beach day, is bringing a picnic with. I always make sure to pack lots of snacks and plenty to drink, it gets hot and you get very thirsty. For snacks I pack carrots, vegetable dip, grapes that I’ve washed and removed from the vines and put into a zip baggie, sliced bell peppers (any color), different types of crackers and goldfish, a variety of chips and my kids love olives, so I bring a small container of those too. Sometimes I’ll even bring watermelon slices in a zip baggie or apple slices too, even pickles. Hahaha! Then I make sandwiches, either ham or turkey with cheese, lettuce, slivered onion and tomato, with mustard and mayonnaise. I buy the white Kaiser rolls from Walmart to make the sandwiches and they are amazing! We have the one cooler full of food and another cooler just for drinks. Gatorade, waters, and juice boxes all the way to the top. Occasionally we’ll bring pop (soda), but mostly we try to stick to stuff that will really keep us hydrated.
When packing for a beach day you can’t forget your beach umbrella and a large sheet to lay down over the hot sand. Towels and sunscreen too. Lots and lots of sunscreen. I’m prone to burning as I have Irish heritage and I’m quite fair skinned, so I use the kind with a really high SPF. My kids also have to have their sand toys and a beach ball to play with, definitely can’t forget those. Oh, and the most important part, swimsuits of course!
We load up the car with ourselves and everything else we can think of and we’re off. A day at the beach in the warm sun and the sand, seeing the kids playing in the waves and the water, walking out onto the pier watching the boats go by, maybe even staying to watch the sunset, it’s just a little slice of heaven. Going to the beach and spending the day with family is one of those things that makes you wish the day could last forever.
