There is something pretty special about taking your children to a place brimming with happy childhood memories.
Every summer without fail we used to go on holiday to a small cottage, a field away from a beautiful beach near Tyrella in Northern Ireland. There was no electricity, we had to draw water from a well and the outside loo was an old sentry box. I remember my granny cooking over an open fire; card games, swingball, sand in my sleeping bag and looking for shells. I LOVED looking for shells. I spent hours on the beach, walking along slowly with my head bowed, searching the tide line.
I must have talked about it a lot, because my enthusiasm seems to have rubbed off on my daughter. So much so that I promised I'd take her to my shell beach when we were over staying with my mum last week.
No amount of miserable weather was going to put her off: she waited by the door, bucket and spade in hand until everyone was ready to go. It was her dad's last day with us before he headed back to Afghanistan, so making the most of the grey day felt like the right thing to do.
We were lucky - we caught a small window of dry weather. Still cold though; but before you could say 'where's my jumper' she was running about in her cozzy....
The boys warmed up with some running..
moments later they were jumping waves....in their jeans. Daft loons.
Everything about the beach felt so familiar, and the shells were as good as ever. The kids helped me gather some up for a little project I had in mind. All the time I was scanning the colourful piles, searching for that little, elusive gem of the shell world...
...a COWRIE.
Finding one has always been special, and boy was I excited when I did! No playing it down in front of the kids. It was like finding treasure - I was yelling and waving it about....showing off basically! We found 12 altogether.
On the way back we stopped off to get a tube of glue. My plan was to see what we could make out of our shell collection - another thing I used to love doing. Now it does require a bit of patience, but worth it I think; and after a quick coat of clear nail varnish, this is what we came up with.
Lovely little reminders of our day on the beach.
Linking up with Country Kids over at Coombe Mill
and Suzanne's Oldies but Goodies!