Weekending it

It was a perfect sunny weekend.  I secretly love heat waves.  Yes, of course it's miserable heat and uncomfortable but I'd take a heat wave over an arctic blast any day.  These are the days I dream about in the dead of winter.

On Saturday we headed to the beach!

Dan and I discovered South Beach in Staten Island last summer.  It is the perfect beach for us.  Quick and easy to get to (just a short bus ride), it's clean, not overly crowded, and even has a little snack shack. 

We love Coney Island for it's atmosphere and Nathan's Hot Dogs but when we want to actually find a spacious area on the beach and enjoy the sand and water without worrying about stepping on broken glass and garbage - South Beach is the better option.

We bought a little pop-up beach tent thing at IKEA back in April and used it for the first time.  It was great!  It provided shade, a place to hide our belongings, and it didn't fly away like the beach umbrellas around us.  I forgot to snap a picture of it assembled but you can see it packs down into the thing under Dan's arm. I think we paid like $11 for it or something cheap like that.

The sand was blistering hot but the water was cold! We sat by the water and then eventually got shoulder deep in the water, Dan gave me a piggyback in the water (nothing better than feeling weightless in water), made sand creations, hunted for sea glass, and all around had a happy time.

We played Chinese Poker, got hot dogs and chips at the snack shack, soaked-in some burning sunnies and left after about three hours.  A perfect length of time.

Oh how I wish summer was as long as winter...