For my birthday, Saturday, we traded our kids for these:


Two kayaks and the open ocean.

This little rock became our home for the night.

It was not glamping, by any stretch of the imagination (I even forgot my camping bunting). We ate cup-o-soup

and oatmeal

and scrunched into our old two-man tent (and good thing, too, as the one flat spot of sand was just barely big enough for our footprint).

It was a short enough paddle, so we had the whole afternoon to just relax and explore. Do you know how rare it is to have hours and hours with nothing to do? I bet you do. We visited the neighboring island, circumambulated our own, swam, napped. I drew and wrote in my nature journal, and, because I adore Melissa's little nature-inspired embroideries over at Tiny Happy, I free-handed a little picture of our island:

And now I'll be sure to take embroidery supplies every time I go camping. And I won't forgo certain natural colors (I'd only taken blues, grays, greens and browns, due to my preconceived vision of what I would see).

On Sunday, we took our own sweet time packing up, then paddled out to visit some other islands before letting the wind and the waves drift us back toward home.