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This one was trickier than I expected. The obvious choice is an image of the children laughing, enjoying, just being.

But I wanted to avoid the obvious – Joy is such a deep, searing emotion, and I’m so lucky to have so much of it in my life. We are a family which takes a LOT of photos, and I have so very many to choose from for this.

But this week, right now, amid all the happiness of the school holidays and the long days just doing ‘happy stuff’ there have been moments when I have simply felt my insides sing.

Moments which wouldn’t look like much to anyone else, but for me, for us, they have such enormous meaning. And such deep, deep joy in watching.

That’s No.1.

Being 11.

Running, laughing, falling, being stoopid…

And right now, there’s nothing much more joyful than that.

(for those new to the blog, here’ s precisely why these images fill us with joy…)

This post is part of Tara’s weekly Gallery over on Sticky Fingers – be sure to have a look at what everyone else has done, and leave them a nice comment. Exploring the gallery entries is always an adventure.

See?

Happy.

We had our weekend plans dashed by the monster weather (we just didn’t fancy driving 3hrs in gale force winds, strangely enough), and weren’t sure what to do with ourselves.

So we decided there is only one thing you actually CAN do in monster winds – go to the beach!
Mindful of Boy’s aversion to whipping-up sand, we meandered down to Chesil Bank (which is all stones, and not sand) to see what the sea was doing…

Wow.

Have honestly never seen anything like it.

It was pure, utter, awesome powerful madness.

We were walking along a bank of stones that is probably 20′ above the water mark – and the waves were TOWERING over our heads.

Have NEVER seen a sea so ‘BIG’… I’m struggling, and I just don’t have the words to convey quite what it was. The actual assault of the noise from the sea crashing and roaring and dragging the stones, the wind ripping through our lungs, the low growling grey sky which kept being broken and allowing patches of eye-shattering blue to burst upon us..

It was just the most enthralling, exciting afternoon.

Pink detested it, of course, and hid inside my coat the whole time (once again I bless my big duffel coat… has saved my children on more occasions than I can count) but the rest of us just watched and listened and absorbed the scene around us.

We found two dead baby sharks washed up, some kind of tropical-looking fruit we couldn’t name, stacks of cuttlefish and shells, the head of a very large fish, countless odd bits of interesting debris, and when we got bored with scavenging the tide mark we just stood and watched the sea in awe. Amazing.
Eventually, the wind dipped to a gentle murmur, the sun was dropping so fast it appeared under boiled peaty clouds and just washed the beach in orange and gold and russet and pink and beauty.

The children were cold by then (I’d have stayed til it was dark) so we headed into Abbotsbury, found a tearoom still open and had hot chocolate and pieces of cake. Perfectness.

Got home and realised just how wet we all were, just from the spray – and how utterly caked in salt. Chunks of it in our eyebrows, hair just matted and stiff… but what a brilliant day.

C had a shoot on the beach, so we all tagged along, and I took the boys far far away from professional Daddy. Well – to the next beach along, anyhoo.

They got wet. Obviously.

Summer. Wide beautiful (weirdly-coloured-sand) beaches, hidden strips of moorland, the Best Stream Ever, and… time.

Time to play, to laugh, to be silly, to eat, to snooze, to splash. Time to Be.

And, most precious, most joyous joy of all  – time for our prickly, awkward, angry middle man to fall in love with his Daddy again.

Rather a lot of the fortnight looked like this

This was our toot-too, Chugga, Chugga, Big red car (yes, they LOVE The Wiggles)

We stayed as late as we possibly could

watching the sun go down was simply magical

Sad boy fell onto some barnacle covered rocks. Very Big Ouch.

But it wasn't all beach, beach beach (yes, he's biting a stone. No I don't know why. No he didn't swallow it).

We came across the BEST river - and went back and played All. Day. Long. Pure Boy Heaven.

But then we went back for more Beaching

Dead Crab hats are so IN this year, doncha know.

But actually, this right here was the biggest magic of all. Just as this was taken, C turned to me and BEAMED. Boy had just slipped his hand in and held tight.

And this is how the holiday finished. this is the Boy who decide months ago that he simply would NOT cuddle his Daddy any more. And just about broke his Daddys heart. Can't tell you quite what this one image means to C.