a collective "aaahhh"

We're back...

Quick update since my last post...Irene didn't amount to much here at our humble abode, OCMD website on Sunday morning said visitors can arrive as early as 12 noon...we packed up the car and left the house by 11:15 and were on the beach by 3 on Sunday afternoon :)
We basically had OCMD to ourselves until Tuesday when about five more people joined us...by Thursday we could see the holiday weekend crowd arriving and today when we left it was bumper-to-bumper! I think it was Tuesday when we all sort of settled into our "beach house" and our vacation "routine", at that moment, Tuesday on the beach, I think there was a collective "aaahh" from all five of us (my mom spent a few days down there with us).

Highlights:
1. the beach
2. the view at our place was AMAZING...we could lay in our bed and look out a HUGE window wall out onto the bay...same view in the living room, gorgeous!!
3. the beach is free
4. parking is free (at the beach) (and at the boardwalk it's only a dollar an hour...OCMD beats OCNJ on that one!!!!)
5. playing with the kids on the beach...non-stop action but sooooo fun! Maybe I"ll relax on the beach when I'm 60!!
6. dinner with my lovely mom at a restaurant called Dead Freddies...basically a bar with a playground for kids...conservative mom handled it well (and treated)
7. the beach
8. riding surrey's on the boardwalk, twice! The kids LOVED this, mostly they like that they sat in a basket in the front while we sat behind them. Miss M kept saying, "we're in the front and you're in the back sitting in carseats"
9. watching the kids faces on rides (I see a future for Scott and both kids and season pass to Great Adventure...they both loved the thrill and begged to go on the big rollercoaster, thank God they were too small!!!)
10. the fact that we spent $250 to rent our place for the week (don't ask how, just thank God for miracles)
11. watching people crab with a chicken leg tied to a string (this was creepy and fascinating at the same time...and yes, blue crabs really are blue!!)
12. spending a week with Prince Charming, he really is charming when he isn't working out in the hot sun on your roof for 10 hours a day!!
13. have I mentioned the beach????? I am such a beach person, I could sit there ALL day and play, swim, read, snooze, sip lemonade, eat pb&j and people watch. Prince Charming tolerates the beach, and he does it much better now that we have two little ones that take after their mama. I think we could have gotten to the beach each morning by 8 am and stayed until 6 pm and the kids would have been thrilled, exhausted, but thrilled!!
14. a Christian radio station (why is it that everywhere I go in the US they have good Christian radio stations...Philly...nothin')
15. vacation food...need I say more???
16. Miss M saying about 100 times a day, I have good news and bad news, the good news is I'm with my whole family at the beach...(the bad news varied from things like I lost giraffee, there's no more bologna to I only got to watch Tangled twice)
17. my mom coming for a few days...and no, we didn't use her as a babysitter! It was just nice to have her company, the kids LOVE to be with her, she loves the beach and we got to play games at night after we put the kids to bed! All highlights!!

I could go on...

We had such a great week together, that's my favorite part of vacation. I don't think I really care where we go, I just love that we were all together doing fun stuff. No talk about work, bills, church, family issues, hurricanes (well maybe a little, the whole island was still boarded up when we arrived!!) just playing, relaxing and enjoying each others smiles, laughs and hugs!

And when we got home we got a good laugh at what was in our fridge...1 gallon jug of water, 2 Mr. Iced Tea pitchers of water, our regular water pitcher, 10 sippy cups filled with water and all our nalgene type bottles filled with water and a rotten tomato! Good-night Irene!!