Beach Vacation 2012: Part 1

On August 3 we were UP and OUT and headed to the BEACH....by 6:50 am. Yep, that was fun. Amazingly Colin was up and raring to GO when I opened his door at 6:30...not really surprising though!



Those headphones??? AMAZING. So peaceful when the kids are plugged in! I did make them unplug when we went over the "big, big" bridge!



Finally, FINALLY around 4:00 we got to the beach house. We had to be beg Colin for ten minutes to unload the car before we HAD to go see the water. We told him we were just saying HI and talking a little walk, but, yep, kids were both soaked in three minutes.




Welcome to the beach, I guess! We haven't been to the beach in two years, so the kids were really little last time they saw the water, so I was a bit worried they would be afraid and not like it....NO WORRIES! They loved the surf. Ran, jumped, screamed, chased, you name it. Ocean = BIG FUN.

GraGra, Papa, Zach, and his friend Joe finally made to the house, so we all settled in, spread out, and headed out for some pizza! The kids were so tired by bedtime, it didn't take long to get them settled...into their shared bedroom! C&G haven't shared a room since they were 4 months old, so this was quite an experiment for us all! And, mostly, they did GREAT! I think they were just too tired to screw around! And, it was SO nice for the grown ups to not to have to share a room with a kiddo!

Sunday was a HOT, SUNNY, and perfect for a beach day! And we took advantage of it!

First hole of the week!




Checking out the surf with GraGra.




Hi Mommy and Daddy!



(The hole wasn't really that deep, Colin was basically LAYING in the hole here)



First shell of the week....many more to follow!


The kids called this swimming:



Sunday night was wrapped up with a big scoop of ice cream at the end!




More fun to come! Woo hoo!

Beach Vacation 2010 - Travel

This year we decided that we would head-out for the beach relatively early in the morning: 6:00 AM. We didn't quite make that... we left at around 6:20, but with two 21-month-old twins, I'll take it. This is earlier than the kids normally get out of bed, so we had a very faint hope that they might doze a little in the car. That didn't happen. Nevertheless, the kids were well behaved all morning.

We made pretty good time on the first leg of our trip and arrived in Lacaster a little after 10 in the morning. Lea had hoped to find a McDonald's with a play area, but we managed to strike out there... I guess we just need to get an iPhone so we can look these things up. If you recall, last year we stopped at Lapp's Family Restaurant in Lancaster for lunch. Since it had a big open parking lot and a grassy surrounding area, we figured we would stop there again since we couldn't find a play area. Much to our surprise, however, Lapp's was closed! That, however, did not deter us from stopping anyway and using the parking lot and grassy area as a way for the kids to blow off some energy. GraGra and Grandpa Greg also met up with us there and from that point on we traveled together.

Since Lapp's was closed and it was still early, we decided to drive on a bit further before stopping for lunch. We drove through the touristy Amish country surrounding Lancaster, through Gap, and into Delaware and then started seriously looking for lunch. Outside of Newark we stopped at a Bob Evans - which had to have been the sloooooooooowest Bob Evans in history. It took forever to get lunch. The kids, who had been awake since just be 6:00, didn't really want to eat (even though they were hungry). Since it took forever, they started to get antsy - they weren't bad, but I was ready to be done.

Since we were now into the time span when the kids are normally napping, they were already antsy, and traffic on Delaware Route 1 is generally horrible, we deployed the DVD player and buckled the kids in. Even though distance-wise we were most of the way there (only about 80 miles from our desitination), the after-lunch travel session seemed like the longest.

Traffic on Delaware Route 1 is horrible. It slows and stops for no reason. Crawls along at a snail's pace for miles. I hate it, but I'm fearful that the devil I know is better than any of the other devils out there that I don't know. Luckily the kids were entranced by the Sesame DVD in the player, and at different points each of them slept for about a half an hour:


About 2 and a half hours and 80 miles after we finished lunch we arrived at the realty office in Rehoboth to pick up the keys to the beach house. We managed to get mostly situated before C&G needed dinner. They ate some leftover pizza that GraGra and Grandpa Greg had brought with them and then we headed down to the beach.

Both Colin and Gillian LOVE the beach! Well, ok, I exaggerate. They LOVE the "Watie!", they could take or leave the sand. Both kids love to stand in the surf and let the water hit them.



Gillian ended up getting knocked over by the surf, but she didn't even care! They love the beach!

Beach Vacation 2010 - Prolog

So, after having some very unhappy kids for the latter half of our trip to the beach last year, Lea decided that we should get a portable DVD player to entertain the kids this time around. Given that Colin is currently beyond obsessed with Play with Me Sesame, this plan was bound to work out well. I have to say that I'm kind of against the whole TV in the car thing as when I was a child we didn't have this and yet we were able to survive long car trips. There's also a part of me that believes that things like portable DVD players in cars are contributing to a lack of patience and constant need for entertainment in todays kids... however, I do value a little peace and quite, so we bought a DVD player. The thinking being that this would become the entertainment of last resort.

Our kids are pretty good travelers, and they do very well (for almost 2 year-olds) on the 2.5-hour trip between Pittsburgh and Brockway. However, because Lea wanted to test out the whole DVD player strategy, we did a dry run on the trip up to Brockway/Beechwoods for the Smith Family Reunion - which happened to be the weekend before we left for the beach.

Having purchased a DVD player of our very own and having borrowed one from Uncle David and Aunt Mercedes, we forgot one very important thing - a way to mount them! So, at about 8:00 on the night before we were going to drive up to the family reunion, I set about to make car mounts for the DVD players. We had obtained two players with the thought that we would put one in front of each kid. Lacking any visible attachment points, I decided that the best way to attach the players to the seats was to construct sleeves that could be attached to the seat backs and into which the players could be inserted. The construction materials available on hand were relatively limited: some 2x4's, other misc. large pieces of woods, diaper boxes (which are omnipresent in our house), duct tape, and some synthetic twine. Figuring that the 2x4's were going to be of relatively little use, I focused on the diaper boxes, duct tape, and twine. The results were functional, but not high on the glamor scale:



This setup had several significant drawbacks:

1. The DVD players had to be removed from the sleeves in order to change DVDs - Not a huge problem, but annoying none-the-less.


2. We had to listen to two different DVDs at the same time - Neither DVD player had a video-in port, so we were stuck having two different programs playing. You don't know annoying until you have two different Elmos screeching at you.


3. It was kinda hard to get the players into and out of the sleeves - I wanted the sleeves to fit tightly so that the players were held securely. However, since both players had switches, wheels, and jacks on the sides, the tight fit proved to be a real pain.


4. You have to remove the players from the sleeves to change DVDs - not a big deal, but still a pain.

Having learned/borne the drawbacks on the way up to Brockway, I spent a good part of the trip thinking about possible solutions.

Upon arriving in Brockway, I sketched out a new mounting system and showed it to Grandpa Frank. (I scanned the sketch before we left for the beach, but I forgot to bring the image along with us, so you'll have to wait to see it.) I believe that Grandpa Frank probably thought to himself, "you could do it that way," but he kept it to himself. He did, however, offer several alternative design suggestions: we could build a mount that attached to the sun roof of the car using quarter-inch steel rods... or we could build something vaguely similar to what I had wanted out of sheet metal... in the end we built what I had wanted:



It's not perfect, but it worked pretty well. One screen, One Elmo, Sane Parents.

Beach Vacation: Travel

On the morning of Saturday, July 11, we loaded the kids into the car and headed out for our summer vacation destination: Dewey Beach, DE (just a little south of Rehoboth). This was to be C&G's longest car trip to date and we were understandably a little nervous about how this was going to go down. Fortunately both C&G were relatively sleepy in the morning and slept through a good portion of the first half of the trip. There was a little bit of ire from the kids as the clock ticked down toward lunch time. Fortunately, we arrived in Lancaster around their scheduled lunch time and we stopped at Lapp's Family Restaurant (which happens to be directly across the road from the Dutch Wonderland amusement park).

By lunch time, everybody was ready for a diaper change...


Alas, once in the restaurant, neither Colin or Gillian was particularly interested in eating their bottle. They did eat their solids pretty well, but there was no convincing them that they should drink a bottle. The adults, however, needed no convincing to eat their lunch.

Lea had driven for the first half of the trip (as this was mostly driving across PA on the turnpike), and after lunch it was my turn. C&G both did well initially; however, as we sat in traffic on Rt. 1 in DE, both children grew increasingly impatient. When we finally pulled into the real estate office in Rehoboth, C&G were pretty cranky... and then the fire siren went off. Colin did not like that.

Upon arriving at the house it was after baby dinner time, so we rushed to get them dinner. We had to at least partially unload the car in order get everything needed for baby dinner. Grandpa Greg was fortunate enough to get a parking ticket while he was helping to watch the babies. So, it was a fun end to the day for everyone.

All in all, though, everyone made it to the beach safe and sound so we really can't complain. I will say that I'm hoping for a faster (and less grumpy) trip back.