Happy Wednesday! I’m back home from two little trips and it’s still summer!! I have a few teacher friends going back to work today and I feel for them! You can do it, friends! I’ll be holding down the fort at the pool for you this week. I head back to work on Monday and I am going to squeeze every bit of summer out of this week as I can.

This morning was back to my summer routine. Up at 4:45 to run before my 5:30 Body Pump class. It is awfully early, but I love having my workout done by 6:30. The other bonus is that I can watch the sunrise through the window during class. It makes those lunges a little better.

I headed out on Thursday afternoon with my mom and dad to go visit my sister. She just moved to Atlanta in the middle of July. We had some fun girl time shopping for important outfits (dresses for the girls and suits for the guys 😉) and had an incredible dinner at Frankie’s Steakhouse.

I love this monogram that I got from Cora’s Den on Etsy. I did add a little extender to the back, but I will definitely be picking up a few more monograms from her!

We had an early wake up on Sunday (hello 4:45 am) to make our flight home. Jeff met me at the airport in Baltimore with a packed van. We switched cars and I was off to the beach.

For the past few summers, my dear friend Kourtni has invited us for a moms and boys beach trip before she starts back to work. We all love this trip! Kourtni took all 4 boys down early in the morning so they could have a full beach day. I stopped at a park for a quick run before joining them on the beach. It was a beautiful beach day!

Our dinner that night took a looooooooooong time but our two bigs sat at the table and talked with us while the littles hit the playground.

On the way home, we saw a bunch of fireworks and stopped to enjoy them. The fireworks display earned a bunch of “whoa”s and “cool”s from our group!

On Monday morning we got up and headed back to the beach. Unfortunately we got chased off the beach around 2 by a thunderstorm. It thundered and rained for hours! Luckily it stopped in time for us to enjoy dinner outside. We headed to Ropewalk for my favorite drink of summer, a key lime crush! It is beyond amazing and I am going to try to recreate it at home.

We hadn’t played mini golf yet this summer so we headed over to play after dinner. And you can’t play beach mini golf if you don’t follow it up with ice cream!!

Tuesday morning was a repeat of Monday. Off to the beach and chased off by a thunderstorm around 4. It was overcast, but the sky over the ocean was beautiful!!!

Jack snapped this picture of Kourtni and I doing what we do best on the beach. Watch our boys have fun and read our books in the sunshine!

Luke made friends with the lifeguards again, but maintains that Miss Amy is still his favorite! The guards were all switched around so we didn’t go back to visit her.

We stopped in for a quick dinner at our beach favorite, Grotto Pizza, and then headed home. I was thrilled that Radio Margaritaville was replaying a Jimmy Buffet concert for the drive home. I sang the whole way while the boys slept.

One of the best parts of vacation is that wake up and run means just that, not wake up to an alarm and run like at home.

In a very un-Sarah move, I’m plowing through some laundry this. Jeff usually does all our laundry, but we need to get caught up because Luke has a soccer tournament this weekend and we aren’t going to be home much.

If you need me, I’ll be at the pool finishing my 36th book of the summer, The Islanders by Meg Mitchell Moore, and starting number 37, The Surfside Sisters by Nancy Thayer. Have a great day full of sunshine and books!!

Linking up with Lindsay and the gang for Welcome Wednesday.