Memories in the Sand (Dollar)

Last night I made my first sand dollar cookie...

And it got me thinking. When I was a little girl we used to spend our family vacations together on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. The beaches are beautiful and I have many happy memories there. One year there was a devastating hurricane and I remember my parents being concerned about what the island would look like the next time we returned after the storm. Thankfully the beauty was still there, but something had changed. Somehow the ocean floor had become PACKED with sand dollars. Never having "felt" a sand dollar before, the art of scrunching our toes in the sand to find the little buried treasures was perfected. The thrill was the same time after time and we would wave them in the air triumphantly to our family members looking on from their beach chairs. We never experienced the same thing there again was the sand dollars, but it is a memory I know we will always have.

We had a similar thrill on our honeymoon during a boat outing we took in Turks & Caicos. During one part of the trip we docked at this small deserted island:

Turned out that the sand was full of sand dollars. The childhood toe scrunching in the sand began and the memories returned. Thankfully everyone else on the boat found the same joy in it and we ended up spending over an hour looking for the treasures. (Cue the triumphant hand waving when you found one.) Sometimes it's the little things that make the most impact in your memory.

So what may seem like a simple cookie sometimes has a great deal of meaning.

Thanks for reading my little story this morning. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday weekend!

PS - My mom's birthday was yesterday and while we celebrated last night I still wanted to wish her a happy birthday on here. Hope it was a great day mom! xoxo