Appreciating the Summer Vacationland that Fairfield, Connecticut Offers

I took this photo at sunset at Jennings Beach at the end of June, on my daughter’s birthday. Gotta love that light! We are so lucky to live here!

We’ve been back for almost a week from our vacation on Outer Cape Cod. While it was fantastic to go away to one of our favorite places on Earth, I also think about how lucky we’ve been and are to have the beaches of Fairfield to enjoy.

A couple of years ago, Marilyn gave me the gift of a picture frame in the shape of a sea star. I look at it every time I am at the kitchen sink – which is many times every day! In it, I have written a variation of a quote I’ve seen about living on a lake, “If you are lucky enough to live near the beach, you are lucky enough.”

Here’s that daily reminder-we ARE lucky enough!

While we don’t live on a lake, we live less than a two-minute drive from a public lake, where all three of our children learned how to swim for $25 for a three-week session, a half an hour lesson, Monday through Thursday. There are two sessions per summer and for every summer of the last seven years, I have signed up each child for both sessions as soon as they were eligible at age 5. Even with last year’s increase in family membership, it is still a great bargain.

There’s our youngest, practicing his freestyle at Lake Mohegan.

The kids love to get thrown into the water by their father!

At another favorite Long Island Sound beach, Penfield Beach, here are our two boys swimming on their backs, while their proud dad looks on…

We begin and end our summers with a bonfire on the beach with good friends. (Thank you, Valerie, for arranging the fire permits to make this a routine happening!)

Nearing the end of summer vacation from school, I am grateful for the summers we have “staycationed” (even before the word became a word!) and for this summer when we were able to go away to a beach where the kids could ride some good waves on their boogie boards.