I will never forget calling my mother while holding a days-or-maybe-weeks-old baby Vivi.  I was choking back silent tears, completely overwhelmed by the new experience of motherhood.  She was doing her best to cheer me up; to get me to look forward into the future and out of the heaviness in my heart.  She said, "Just think!  Before you know it, you will be going on family vacations to the beach, having so much fun playing in the sand and the waves and the sunshine!  It's going to be wonderful."  And to myself, I thought, "She's lying.  That cannot possibly happen."  The word fun had removed itself from my vocabulary, and I thought it had done so permanently.

Never mind that I myself had been on our family vacations as a child, having fun playing in the sand and the waves and the sunshine and eating Daddy's yummy beach spaghetti (he can't sit still; so on beach vacations, he would cook).  I just couldn't see how that would possibly happen when my world was all of the sudden revolving around the cries of a tiny person who ate every one to three hours and that I just didn't understand.

Fast forward five years, which seem like a mere blink and yet like decades at the same time, and we just returned from our first family vacation on our own without any grandparents.  And it was like a dream.  I'll be honest, when we arrived Thursday night after three stops on a five hour car ride, which turned it into 8 hours, we were weary.  When we assessed our room, I wasn't completely optimistic any of us would sleep.  And when one of them was a little over-dramatic about sleeping on a sofa bed, my heart sank.  But, in the end, they did sleep, and we did sleep.  And when we walked out onto the beach for the first time Thursday morning, and the girls were skipping and completely losing themselves in the small waves crashing on the beach and treasure after treasure of shells and tiny crabs and little sea worms and who knows what, I realized we were there, and my mother was, in fact, not lying at all.

And then on Saturday afternoon, when we were sitting by the pool, one of the littles was a bit cranky, and Chip and I sighed heavy, tired sighs.  We were maybe wishing a little that we could give in and sink into a long, sweet nap on those lounge chairs in the perfect breeze and the sunshine, and then we spotted a gaggle of pre-teen girls flocking to the baby pool to do cartwheels and giggle with each other.  And there was our future, staring us in the face.

So then, when one begged us to watch her swim underwater for the 100th time, we happily obliged, grateful she wanted our attention, and when another clung to my leg because she was cold and maybe a bit frightened by the vastness of the ocean, I walked very slowly and was extra grateful for the tiny hand behind my knee.

Because now I know that five years is really not so very far away.  And when we packed up to leave, I was a little melancholy.  And I wanted to join little Brigie who took off her pj's and crammed herself into a corner under a pillow while we packed because she didn't want to leave.  Because there won't be another vacation when they are five and three and four months.  This was it; where time stood still for four days while we took in this slice of time in our family.  And goodness, was it precious.  My cup is running over.

(photos taken at Jekyll Island - you can see a few more on instagram!)