Third beach week -- a resounding success!!!

Last week we went to Bethany Beach again for a week, and I finally, finally feel like we did the beach right.

You might remember when we first started going to beach, we were total novices and not really all that fond of the beach, but we wanted our kids to have that experience growing up, so we bit the bullet and did it.

I'm so glad we did, because now we really know why people love it so!

The first time we went, we stayed in a hotel - BAD idea.

The second time we went, we stayed in a 1-bedroom condo. Still not great.

This time, we rented a 3-bedroom house and it was perfection!

We even invited my sister and her husband and their two boys, who came for two days and one night, and my Mom and Dad, who brought my other sister's three youngest and stayed for two nights and three days!

More space plus more family = best beach week ever.

Here's the story in one hundred million photos.

There was lots and lots of cousins, water guns, watering cans and fun:

Kwahli and Dean

Russy

Kwahli

Kwahli is getting Russy pretty good in this shot!

Alahna

Aminah

The gang, including my Mom and Dad, who loved the water and the sand as much as the kids.

The gang again. Except for Matty and Clair, this is all the kids. It's the only shot I got of (just about) everyone.

Matty and Clair didn't get in the water at all. Too scary.

                     

    But this is the first year my boys got in it -- even if it was only at the very edge!

. Check Dean out!

That's Cary crouched in the water! Can you believe it?

Why is Matty doing push-ups on the beach? No one knows.

He's going to go ask one of the big kids to get him some water...

So he can pour it on people.

Reggie and Lester

Tahira and Reggie (and my Dad) are the only ones who ventured out into the water. The rest of us are wusses.

Making toe-prints

 We built really rudimentary sandcastles:

We need to work on our technique

We walked along the beach in the early morning:

My Dad took this picture on a morning that he and my Mom took the kids out so we could sleep in. Yes!

We posed on the beach (a lot, and often only after being bribed by me):

Don't they look thrilled to be taking this photo?

This is as close as Clair would get to the water

My handsome Deanie

My scary sea monster Cary

This is the "if you hug and smile I will give you candy" pose.

Why Cary? Why?

We sat for an on-the-beach picture...

And got surprised by a wave!

 My Dad broke the beach rules (and fell asleep happy):

He thought this was so hilarious.

This was after hours of being beaten up by strong waves. My Dad loves the beach!

At the beach house, we ate (a lot), stayed up way too late, blew bubbles and made sidewalk chart art:

Aminah made a beautiful landscape scene (and used up most of the chalk)

Dean's dinosaur! He's such a good artist!

Clair and Matty bonded:

A little...

We saw things we never see at home, like bunnies just hopping around.

This is the Momma bunny, but we saw her babies too. Just hopping around the town! Bethany is such a sweet little place.

We ate a lot of steamed crabs after the kids went to sleep (and had some delicious spirits)

This is the second night of demolishing a crap ton of crabs. The first night we bought a 1/2 a bushel for Reggie's birthday -- and crushed those too.

Dean asked to pick his own crab, so we experienced that milestone! (He did pretty good!)

Train 'em up early!

And we walked around a ton in the little beachtown and ate (A THOUSAND POUNDS OF) frozen custard. We went to Funland TWICE, and I started and finished a book!

All in all, it was an amazingly fun, relaxing and family-filled vacation.

We can't wait to do it again next year!

Winter 2013: The season of museums

Happy New Year!

I am back at work and I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. It's amazing how quickly you can get out of a routine. My body still wants to pad around in pajamas and raid the refrigerator 15 times a day -- not sort through emails and Outlook appointments and invoicing problems. In fact, I am having trouble keeping my mind off of all the fun we had over the holiday break.

Sometime around Thanksgiving, I declared this winter the winter of museums. I wanted to start getting the kids out to see all of the wonderful things there are to see in our area museums. I intended to start in January, but since we had some time off to fill, we started last week. And somehow, we ended up doing three museums in three days!

On Saturday, Lester took the boys to the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is very close to our house, so I don't know why we don't go there more often. (Especially since it is free!)

He said the boys really enjoyed looking at all the art, and looking for "babies" and "animals."

"Look Daddy, I see an animal!"

Little art historians in the making.

He looks like he is really studying this.

On Sunday, Lester wanted to take down our tree, which was shedding pine needles at an alarming rate (and Clair was eating them just as quickly). So I decided to take the kids out of the house to my Mom's. My sister Kadija's kids were there, as usual, and my Mom really needed a break from babysitting, so on a whim, my Dad and I decided to take all the kids to the Smithsonian.
Kadija's 12-year-old opted out, so it ended up being me and Dad and SIX kids, including little baby Clairzee. We took the Metro on one of the coldest, windiest days of the year, but the kids had so much fun, we barely noticed. (Ask me later about my Dad's "shortcut," that had us walking around D.C. searching for the Museum of Natural History for an hour! On the coldest, windiest day of the year.)

At the Metro stop, waiting with their cousins for the train. Clair's off to the side in a stroller, kicking off her blanket no doubt.

The boys LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the Metro (which is also a hashmark on my Synapse Checklist. Ch-ching!) And the dinosaurs at the museum. And being around all their cousins.
It was a hectic, cold, crowded, long day. But their sheer joy was totally, totally worth it.

Their first ride on the D.C. Metro! They even met the conductor, which was to them the equivalent of me meeting Pharrell or Larenz Tate or Idris Elba.

Walking to the museum with Granddad. I heart this picture.

And then on Monday, New Year's Eve, we met up with our friends Geoff, Stacey and Hugo (who is also 2) for an event at the Maryland Science Center, which included party-hat and noisemaker stations, a performance by the band Milkshake, and a 12 noon ball drop and confetti bomb.

Again, this place made my boys SO incredibly happy. They had a supreme blast! They loved the kids' room (we had to literally pry them out of there); they danced along with the band; they made party hats, and they shrieked with delight when the ball dropped and burst, blowing yellow confetti all over the museum.

Hugo and a small glimpse of alllll the confetti! (Photo by the awesome Amy Davis, who was covering this event for The Sun!)

Cary, Dean and Hugo: Men at work.

Making a New Year's Eve party hat.

 

So, quite accidentally, I'm already well ahead of myself when it comes to the season of museums. Yay!

Next on the list: Hopefully meeting up with Beth for the "Play, Work, Build" exhibit at the National Building Museum; hanging out with Stacey and Hugo again at the Visionary Art Museum; meeting up with my sister and her kids at the new Children's Museum at the national harbor, and locally, the Walters Art Museum, the B&O Railroad Museum (otherwise known as the Train Museum) and more Maryland Science Museum -- because that place is so awesome, we bought a membership!

Lester and I did set goals for the year (not resolutions. Goals.) and one of them is to continue to find fun, enriching things to do as a family. I'd say we're off to a pretty good start.

2013 -- Bring it.