Hanging Out in South Carolina

To Hang out: verb, informal: to spend time in a certain location or with certain people; to spend time doing nothing in particular

I spent most of my college years hanging out with my friends. There were the occasional breaks to study or to endure the freezing cold sprint from the dorm to the gym for a game of racquetball or to go to a party or bar, but we spent most of our time in our dorm room just talking, and maybe drinking a beer or eating from the giant bowl of M&Ms on our living room table (no wonder we all a little pudgy).

When you're a parent, spending time "doing nothing in particular" doesn't seem to happen so much anymore. When you're at home, there are dishes to be washed and floors to be swept and toys to be put away. And if you decide to spend a few hours ignoring all that and hanging out on the couch, you do it knowing that destruction is occurring as you sit -- you're likely to find that as you relaxed, your daughters spilled a can of paint on the floor or made a giant fort out of cardboard and cushions in the basement.

This is why it is of utmost importance to get away every once in a while. Not just for a date night, but for a real full weekend break. And last weekend, we did. My mom watched the girls (thank you!!) and Toby and I headed to South Carolina for our friend Jeremy's wedding, where we spent the weekend hanging out on the beach in 75 degree sunny weather. I have so many wonderful memories from the weekend -- sitting on the front porch while Toby and Parzych played guitar, lounging on the beach with friends, catching up with friends I haven't seen in years, walking under the stars along the beach at night and spotting glow-in-the-dark ghost crabs, kayaking through the marshes with Toby. The beauty of the weekend was both spending time with friends I haven't seen in far too long and just doing whatever we felt like doing whenever we felt like doing it.

It's not easy to get away for the weekend, but last weekend we all talked about how we shouldn't wait for another wedding to all get together. I feel fortunate this fall -- we've had two wedding weekends already and I am meeting up with college friends again in Boston in November. But normally my life doesn't include so many weekends away and this past weekend was a good reminder that it is worth the effort to make sure it happens more often. Because, while we were probably excessive in our lounging around in college, it turns out that spending a weekend just hanging out with your friends is really good for your soul.