Lifestyle Project | JULY | “What _____ Looks Like”

Well, it happened!

 The trip I’d been thinking of and planning for and anticipated for years finally happened.

Ever since my husband and I went back “home” to Connecticut for our high school reunion 4 years ago, I’ve had this nagging desire to bring my kids back to the town we met in, went to high school in, and named our firstborn after.  For some reason, I felt they needed to experience Madison, Connecticut so that they would know that part of our “story”.  It’s such a unique place to have lived during such  formative years. The quintessential small New England shoreline town complete with a town green smack dab in the center of town, home to high school graduations, weddings, parades, and concerts.  I wanted my kids to experience Madison in the summer, when the “summer people” inhabit their “summer cottages” and double the population.  I wanted them to see our high school football field down on the Long Island Sound at the Surf Club right next to the beach where my husband played on Friday nights and I cheered him on from the bleachers of the marching band seats.  I wanted to take them to Lenny and Joe’s Fish Tale and Bill’s Seafood and have them experience authentic New England fare.  I wanted them to smell the hot and humid salty sea air that’s unique to the Atlantic coast.  I wanted them to sit in the old theater downtown and see a movie just like I did as a kid.  I wanted them to be awed by the vastness of the trees and woods and vegetation growing everywhere with no need for sprinkling systems.  I wanted them to appreciate the history of the colonial estates surrounded by ancient stone walls.  I wanted them to pass by the tennis club and wonder why everyone was dressed all in white. I wanted them to see that, instead of doing swim team during the summer like we do in California, kids in Madison took sailing lessons.   I wanted them to experience a little of the magic that  I remembered about living in a small New England beach town.

I took sooooo many pictures during our trip that I’m going to have to break this trip into several posts.  This first post I’m including as this month’s lifestyle post with my group of ridiculously talented fellow photographer friends.  I’m calling it, “What beach life during our New England Trip looks like”.  If you make it through to the end of this post, please follow the link to the talented lindsey bergstrom | boulder lifestyle photography and continue on until you find yourself right back here where you started.

This trip took lots of saving and planning and convincing my husband that if we were going to do this, we had to do it this year because Maddy would be too busy getting things together for college to go next summer.  So, I started the research about a year ago and scoured Craigslist and rental websites to find the right beach cottage to rent.  After lots of trial and error, I ended up booking this tiny cottage a block from the beach.  It was hard to tell from pictures just what we could expect when we got there but I knew the location couldn’t be beat.

This is Marsh Mallow.  It has been in the owner’s family for generations and was the house that he had lived in as a boy about 50 years ago.  It was perfectly authentic New England with very few changes since the owner’s childhood, I’m guessing.  It’s surrounded by a marsh, home to a variety of birds during the day and frogs and crickets at night.  The kids loved spotting the wild bunnies that lived close by and would appear around the yard throughout the day.

Marsh Mallow was a short walk away from the Surf Club where we ended up almost every afternoon with beach chairs and buckets for catching sea creatures and digging moats around sand castles.  (And maybe spontaneous sand flinging water fights.  Maybe).  The kids took full advantage of the snack shack and filled up on french fries, fried shrimp, and ice cream.

Join me as I make the rounds this month to peek in on  what my fellow photographers have been up to starting with lindsey bergstrom | boulder lifestyle photography

And…

Stop back  later in the week for more from our New England trip including a weekend in New York City, a trip to Historic Mystic, and a fun session I did with Maddy in and around the town she was named after… including this favorite one of mine…