We are on a family vacation!!! Just us. At the beach! For one week!!!
Cheers!!!
We got here Saturday night and when we walked into this nice, three bedroom condo, we were very pleased and grateful!!! Thank you John and Martha for letting us enjoy your nice beach house!!!
Sunday morning was lazy around the beach house and we played some games before heading out to the beach!!! I do have to add that before we headed out for our vacation, I made a quick shopping spree to Lee's Camera and bought myself a new, upgraded Cannon!!! I now have all week to read the fat manual and have fun taking gorgeous photo's of my family!!! I really hope this investment is one that will last a life time!!!
Our view from the deck!
I told Mike to give me a smile as I was playing around with my camera settings!!! Good stuff!!! :)))
Our sons!
We are borrowing Mindy's fold up wagon for this beach trip and what a wonderful thing to borrow!!! We just unfold it and pull the little children all around town. Or out to the beach and then on the boardwalk. And of course to the pool and back to the condo!!!
Austin didn't know what the "beach" was until now. He loves to swim and really does a good job swimming all by himself with his puddle jumper on!!! So, the beach was a new experience for him.
When his feet touched the sand, he was all good. But when his hands got sandy, not so much. He didn't like that. Here he goes trying to catch up with the our other children that ran ahead! How adorable!!!
XOXO!!!
When his hands hit the sand, he wasn't too impressed at first. Then he sat and watched the waves come in. He is a little scared of the water but learned to be OK with some sand here and there.
Pretty typical ... our world revolves around the toddler right now and everyone was trying to get him to touch the water.
Some go in tank tops and others in sweatshirts. It wasn't long before we headed back to the beach house to change into our swimming suits and enjoy the sun and sand!!!
With being right along the bay, we bought some chicken backs and tied it on a string. Matthew caught a crab but we so far have no way of retrieving them. No net. Just fun attempts. And then we went for supper and "Little Miss" looks cute!!! :)))
We ate at a restaurant right along the bay. Hadassah posed by the gorgeous sunset after dinner!!!
And when we quick grabbed Matthew for a picture ... well, he didn't really want to pose. :/
Breath taking!!!
The park was packed to the gills and so walked back to the condo porch and watched the night sky light up!
Crabbing fun. Or frustrations!!! Matt wanted to catch a crab so bad but the chicken pieces just floated on the water. We finally saw a crab on top of a cage that was tied along the dock. The minute Matthew dropped down the chicken, it swam to it. But every time he pulled on the rope, it left go. Sigh.
The kids blew up a big inner tube and floated on the ocean water.
Ashlyn loves to ride her bike and the parking lot is a good place for her to ride.
We went to Crab Bag for supper and Ashlyn really wanted a crab to eat. So, we ordered one for her and she devoured it. :) She loves experiences like this and she did a good job at fishing out the meat!!!
Then we went to the board walk. I have many fun memories of walking the boardwalk as a kid and loving it. Well, else our kids are different or the attitudes were on the touchy side or times have changed on the beach. We thankfully found a good parking space pretty quickly and then loaded the little ones in the wagon. Ashlyn just found out the other week that there is a place called "Chuckie Cheese". I told her that Daddy would hate that place but maybe we could find a place on the boardwalk that would reward her with some tickets and prize. The minute she saw the arcade, it's all she could think. We stopped and gave her one ride because we could only find one quarter in my purse. And Mike only had a credit card and plus we wanted some ice cream and walk the board walk a little first. Ashlyn was in tears and grouchy about the entire time. Sigh. When we stopped for some ice cream, I could not understand the ladies working behind the counter. They had ice cream displayed in the front of the store but you had to order it from the back of the store. She said they only had five flavors and because I could barely understand her accent, I just nodded my head at one flavor she suggested. :( But, it turned out to be something chocolatey and carmelly and good!!! :) Ashlyn wanted a frozen pink lemonade instead of ice cream but then didn't like it. Sigh, sigh.
We turned around and went back to the arcade. Austin thought he needed to turn the wagon around. The stress level was rising and Mike and I laughed at how this was all turning out. Wasn't the beach boardwalk a fun place??? (And I'm still working on getting the best quality of pictures from my camera. For some reason, the boardwalk photos turned out 'not so good'.)
I did manage to get some smiles through all of that drama!
The arcade was PACKED OUT!!! Mike hated it the minute they walked in!!! This is something that changed since we were kids. I mean, places like this always have and always will be full of people but the surrounding were horrible. The games were guns and shootings and what happened to the ground hogs that you hit into their holes or the race cars you used to race with??? It seemed like everyone was greedy for more and more tickets. We only had $3 in cash along. (I know ... bad start right there. The hubby forgot to grab some cash.) Ashlyn finally earned a few tickets and she picked out a Chinese hand cuffs as her prize. We were SO ready to leave this loud entertainment place.
The boardwalk outing was a bit stressful and we were so glad to all get back to the beach condo, into our jammies and relax!!! The week will be full of many more stories and memories and we are loving just being together as a family!!!
