Every year in New England, on September 1st, we all prepare for fall. It’s September. It’s Fall. It’s time to get out our cardigans and boots, sleep with the windows open and four blankets, pick apples, drink lattes, and throw around as many decorative gourds as we can.

And every year, on September 1st, we remember that it’s actually still summer.

But our surprise is a gift – doing fun summer stuff in September feels like cheating. I’m swimming in the ocean in September! (And don’t tell anyone the ocean is actually crazy warm in September, or we’ll have to share the beach with too many people.) I’m wearing sundresses in September! We’re having ice cream for dinner in September! Let’s jump in the car after school and do ALL of that on a Thursday!

All the things I was tired of – sand in my car, washing a million towels, late bedtimes, no plans for dinner, car naps – are once again charming and fun. I can sit on a towel by the ocean wondering why we don’t go to the beach EVERY day with absolutely no irony. It’s like my brain was wiped clean on the first day of the month and I’m ready for summer all over again.

The most pleasant part of the whole thing is in a few days (a week, maybe three if we’re lucky) it actually WILL be fall. I’ll vacuum all the sand out of my car and deflate all the floaties until next year. We will all start wearing pants and I’ll buy 3 new striped shirts. We’ll eat apples and chowder and cider donuts and the bakery in Mystic will smell like pumpkin and cinnamon instead of lavender and vanilla. We get our bonus, stolen summer right before the very best part of New England.

This is why we’re still here.

I decided a little while ago my goal for 2015 is to apply for Pro status over at ClickinMoms. That gives me all of 2014 to improve and build a portfolio of work I love and am proud of – and because I just said it here, now I have to follow through. I’m also currently taking a class with the very talented Sallykate Photography so my camera is coming with me EVERYWHERE for the next few weeks. I’m hopeful I’ll have a newborn to practice on soon (PLEASE GOD LET ME HAVE A NEWBORN SOON) so I hope you like baby pictures.

These are all from two Sundays ago at Rocky Neck State Park, taken with my Nikon D600 and 50mm 1.4 Sigma lens. Editing in Lightroom only.

The beach was actually SUPER crowded and the water is brown because it was full of seaweed. It was also freezing. Neither kid cared. Also, Caroline loves sand. LOVES it. Rubbed her face in it. Weirdo.

Playing catch up with literally everything in my life, but at least the weather is gorgeous.

Every morning Evan wakes up and says “What fun stuff are we going to have today?” Luckily, so far, “school” still counts as fun stuff in his book, so when we do school PLUS an adventure his mind is thoroughly blown. It was 95 degrees last Wednesday – not typical in Connecticut – so we all hopped in the car after school and booked it to the shore. I’m sort of ashamed that we’ve lived in Connecticut for eight years and until recently I felt like we lived way too far from the beach to ever go properly. It takes exactly 17 minutes to drive from my door to this park. I’m the worst beach-goer ever.

Although, really, until this summer it’s hardly been worth it with the kids. This was the first time they had ever played happily, independently, and safely while I actually got to RELAX a little bit. I read two pages of a magazine, they ran around in circles, we built and destroyed a bunch of sand castles, Evan and I both swam in the ocean (well, Long Island Sound)(it was still pretty cold), and we all got a little sun-kissed. It was really, really fun and it made me hopeful that vacations will just get more relaxing from here on out.

All hail queen of the beach!