By Maria Lohr, Illustrated by Noel Lunceford
Published November 22, 2016
I drowsily woke up to the voice of my sister, Emma, instructing me to wake up. I lifted one of my heavy eyelids and saw that my bouncy sister was hovering over me, fully dressed and ready for the day. She held two buckets in one hand, and in another was a stack of clothes for me. In the back of my head, I vaguely wondered what my sister was doing, bursting energetically into my bedroom at six o'clock on a vacation. Suddenly, something clicked. As I slowly crept out of my warm and comfortable bed, I remembered that every morning our family vacationed to Florida, my sister and I had a tradition of running out to the beach to see the beautiful early morning sunrise. The thought of this tradition fully awakened me, and I carelessly threw on my clothes, grabbed a couple of light windbreakers, and took the extra bucket from my sister. Emma and I dashed out the condo door, sprinted down three flights of steps, and then finally arrived at the wooden boardwalk that led to the beach. We skipped over it eagerly, and then plopped ourselves down on the cool, soothing sand, only a few feet away from the receding tide.
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