Except then I have to upload a bajillion photos to my computer. Which is slow. And takes forever. But here they are.

We’ve been to the beach with friends. We splashed and tried to catch baby crabs with squid (some of us more successful than others). We’ve watched our kids do cute dances at Balboa Park. We’ve watched Tahitian and Flamenco dancers. We’ve bonded while our kids grew up in front of us.

Friends are wonderful.

(If you’re not a friend or family you might get bored. There are about 50 photos here. But knock yourself out and watch them anyway. All the kids are damn cute).

My yoga instructor talked about guilt the other day. Interestingly, she attributed it to the Western world. I don’t know if they don’t have guilt in other countries, but she was right; we put ourselves through a lot of guilt for no reason.

I thought it would be fun to share our Guilt Lists and then (virtually) tear them up. Here’s mine.

• Guilt about not writing enough on all my blogs
• Guilt about not going to yoga as often as I like
• Guilt about gaining a few pounds
• Guilt about being impatient with Max
• Guilt about drinking too much
• Guilt about not being the kind of parent who volunteers at school
• Guilt about not dusting
• Guilt about not scrubbing the tub
• Guilt about not taking Max to play outside often enough

Looking at this list I see that none of it is earth-shattering. I think we as women experience more guilt than men. What do you think? And for what? It’s just another stressor in our lives.

So here and now I’m making a proclamation that we will deliberately work harder to NOT feel so guilty. The dishes can wait. We won’t blow up if we don’t exercise all week (or month). That hamburger will not go straight to our thighs.

Life is meant to be enjoyed. Let’s start doing that.

I just watched Now and Then, which put me in the mood to write this.

When did we stop believing? I remember when I filled my bed with stuffed animals and had conversations with them until I fell asleep. When I fully believed the tooth fairy left me a dollar for the hollow bloody tooth I left under my pillow. When the world was full of possibilities, and magic was around every corner?

What happened? I believed as a child I’d still believe in magic when I grew up. At one point did I/you/we stop believing in it all?

I remember the day I learned about Santa. My friend (if you can call her that) Courtney just blurted it out in first grade. First grade! Far too young to discover that the world had been stripped of magic. I felt dismayed and disappointed. I wished the magic would last a little longer.

I knew a girl who believed in Santa til 6th grade (or so she said). For Max, I want something between these two scenarios. I want the possibility of magic to live on for him as long as possible. I want him to believe.