One of my favorite traditions that I ever started in my life is the one I had for my birthdays for many years. For a long time, our family beach vacation landed on the same week that my birthday occured. I think, though I could be wrong, that it used to bother me that our vacations were took place on my birthday. Yet, I loved the beach, so why I would have been bothered by it is beyond me. One year, I was having a particularly bad year. My mom was in the hospital for a week with double pneumonia in February of that year, then in May my appendix ruptured and caused an abscess, which caused the doctors to put off my surgery for two weeks to treat the infection. I was in middle school when all that happened and it took quite the toll, not only on me, but also on my mom. My mom and I had become particularly close during that experience and we had long talks about how close we both were to not seeing the sun rise again. This reality hit very hard for us and so my birthday tradition was born. Every year when we went to the beach, my mom, dad, and myself would wake up around 5:30am on my birthday. Keep in mind, we are all very far from being morning people, but we made the exception for this one particular day each year. After waking up, we would walk up to the beach to watch the sunrise, listening to the ocean waves crash against the shore. The ocean was such an incredible deep blue and aqua that contrasted beautifully with the yellow and orange of the sun as it peaked over the horizon, it’s reflection glittering off the ripples of the waves. It’s beauty left me breathless! I’ve always loved the beach, but these moments watching the sunrise gave me a completely new appreciation of its beauty. There were even some years when my dad would dance with me on the beach, just being our goofy selves and enjoying the beauty surrounding us. After the sun was high enough in the sky, maybe after 45 minutes or so, we would go to McDonalds for breakfast and then go back to the house and sleep some more. It was a simple tradition, but an immensely meaningful one. It reminded me that sometimes you need to wake up to the moments of beauty in life and not let yourself just sleep through them, both figuratively and literally. Those moments can slip right on by if we don’t take the time to watch for them. Look for at least one moment of beauty this week. If you want to, tell me about it in the comments below or send me an email about your moment(s) of beauty.