Oh, what a beautiful mornin'

Oh, what a beautiful day! This was the setting for a picnic lunch with my daughter yesterday. It was the official first day of her summer vacation, so we celebrated "no school"! We got up and made cupcakes (then took them to my office for everyone else to eat because I have no willpower). We went to a local state park and enjoyed Haleigh's favorite Subway sandwiches.

We've been having extremely low tides around here for a few weeks, and yesterday was no exception with a -2 tide level, so we headed down to the beach to see what we could find.

One of the first things she came across was this jointed oyster shell that looked eerily like a whale. She proceeded to carry on an entire conversation with it. :-)

Neither of us could get over the giant patches of bright green shiny seaweed.

Just as I started to take this picture, she noticed something and was turning to tell me about it. You can see by her expression she was pretty amazed by it, and if you look out in front of her you might spot the bright splash of color that caught her attention.

Here's a close-up of what she found. She says it's a mama and her baby.

She found this giant purple thing wrapped around a rock. She loves purple.

After we finished turning over rocks and chasing all the crabs we could find, we climbed back up to the picnic area, and Haleigh found the perfect ending for her day.

I'm so glad summer is here. :-)