If you dance & sing & jump & hug, you'll feel warmer

The combination of doing a regular date night with Baine and it staying light 'til 9:30 or so has added an element of much-needed play to my world recently. The last few weeks, we've ended our date nights by watching the sunset on the beach. I mean, really... How much more stereotypically cheesy and brilliant could that be? And I love it.

Even though it was a warm, sunny day, it was still cold when we went to the beach at dusk last night. To keep warm, we walked up and down the beach, balancing on huge pieces of driftwood & pretending like we were going to be eaten or de-legged by a sand monster if we lost our balance and fell off the logs. We played like children, & it was glorious.

At one point, Baine complained of being cold, and while blissfully (and freezingly) bouncing around, I said, "If you just dance and sing and jump and hug, you'll feel warm." And then I gasped and was like, "Did you hear what I just said? That was brilliant!" Quite true both literally and metaphorically. So we did - dance and sing and jump and hug on the beach with a ridiculously gorgeous view of the mountains as a backdrop to the water. At one point, Baine was like, "I feel like I'm just waiting for a whale to come up out of the water and say, 'Hello!'" - just to complete the almost-surreal incandescence of the moment.

We stood a bit in awe of the goodness that surrounded us in those moments, which feel much too rare in our lives. But those are the moments for which I live. And I knew it when it was happening. I was able to be totally and completely present and enjoying the moment, IN the moment. The only hard part of was leaving.