Silly Kids

My kids are nuts...really. If you spend any amount of time with them, you risk getting pulled into their utter craziness. I spent a lot of time with them. Hence craziness ensues in my brain. By bedtime, my mind is a muddled mess. If you try to talk to me, you might not understand a thing I am saying, because it will come out in gibberish. Most nights I do the bedtime routine and get the kids into bed. It's pretty routine and standard. The kids get dressed for bed, they brush their teeth, I read a few stories, sing a few songs, prayers, then bed. It's pretty simple stuff. One night a few weeks ago, the kids threw a wrench into the whole routine, and asked for milk before bed. When I went to get it, that craziness I was talking about ensued...
I could hear lots of loud banging and yelling upstairs, so as soon as I filled the cups, I rushed upstairs. As I entered the room, I saw the oscillating fan that resides in their room in pieces on the floor. They were running around screaming. Presumably celebrating the fact that they had broken yet another item in our house. I was quite frightened, because it looked like a bad situation. The fan was try to oscillate, it was still on, and there were wires sticking out. So I immediately started telling them how bad and dangerous it was, I spoke to each of them, and told them that from now on the fan was hands off. I finally got it back together, oscillating correctly, and was full of adrenaline from the entire situation, when Sophie walked up to fan, very careful to keep her hands off of it. She looked straight into it, and said, "SSSS-OOO-RRR-YYY, MMM-OOO-MMM-MMM-YYY!"

The Beach

August 14-21, our family took a little trip to Ocean City, MD, with the Perini side of the family. My family has been taking trips to the east coast ever since I can remember, and I love that we can pass this tradition onto our kids. According to me, there isn't a more relaxing place on the planet than sitting next to the beach, with the sun warming your skin, and the waves crashing. It's my happy place. We all stayed in a little apartment, in a complex on 67th St. It is actually in the same complex that we stayed in with friends last year. We played on the beach, in the bay, the pool, the fountains, ate yummy food at the buffet at Phillips (Matt and I had a date night!), hang out with family, watched Cars and Up! in the torrential downpour, and just generally had a good time. We didn't spend a ton of time at the actual beach (Matt doesn't really like the beach, or the sun, but I snuck out during naptime a few days), but we did have a really nice vacation! Now to see if I can convince Matt that we need to buy a little house by the crashing waves that I can live in all summer! HA!

The Bay

Our beach house was bay side, so we lucked out, and got to swim in the bay a couple of days. We swam in the bay by the pool, and then also, just outside our house, there was a little beach, with lots of frogs to keep us company. The kids loved the bay because it was warm, calm, and best of all, a giant sandbox. Give my kids sand, water, and shovels and they are set for the day! The only down side to the bay was the fish, and if you stopped swimming for even a minute, they would try to nibble on you...YUCK!

Here is Sophie showing me her seaweed.

Grammie modeling a seaweed hat.

The horseshoe crabs came out every night around five o'clock. They didn't bother us, but the kids loved to watch them. Another dad on the beach lifted one up so that the kids could see it underside. Lots of claws and legs!

Here we are cheesin' hard! This may be one of the only pictures of me at the beach. It's rare that I am not behind the lens!

The Pool

One of the nicest features about the beach house, was the pool. My dad says, "Who drives all the way to the beach to go to the pool?" But go to the pool, we did! It was nice in the pool, because it was cool and refreshing, there weren't waves that could knock the kids over, and the best part? there was no sand! Sand and kids (at least my kids) creates a huge hassle, so i was nice to avoid that a couple of the days. The kids liked to walk in the pool, jump in the pool, and also have people carry them around. We spent a lot of time in the baby pool as well, because there were lots of toys to play with. Above are a few pictures of all of us enjoying the pool.

The Fountains

The community that we stayed in had a large fountain that they turned on everyday at ten o'clock in the morning. It had little grates on the ground, and the water would flow out in a pattern, sometimes softly, and sometimes harder, and then at the end of the cycle, all of the fountains would go off at once, and there was tons of water shooting up. We visited it a couple of times throughout the week. Jack loved it, but wanted to have someone with him when he went into the middle. Sophie will tell you that she didn't like it at all, but I think you can tell by her face that she actually did like it! ;) There were also four little fountains that shot soft, little squirts of water, which Sophie liked more than the big fountains, as you can see in the last photo.

The Boardwalk

Thursday night we went to the boardwalk after dinner. It was family night on the boardwalk, so there were lots of people dressed up as animated characters, and other people making balloon animals. The kids each got a balloon. Sophie a flower and Jack an elephant. Sophie's favorite character was Minnie Mouse, and she was awed to be able to hug her. Minnie was the only character she even got close to. Jack loved them all!