Monday, August 6, 2007

Back from vacation



Here is the view from the deck of our beach house.








Here is Tom with his father. We had a wonderful time visiting our families up north. First we drove about 20 hours(due to traffic and rain) to see Tom's family in NY. After a few days of visiting we drove down to the beach, which took about 6 hours to get to. Thankfully Tom's parents and two of his brother's were able to come and visit for a couple of days. We had a wonderful time, although it ended much too soon. We did manage to go to the beach. Richie came along and enjoyed getting some sun. Tom and Ken got in the water and fought the waves! The kids also swam and made sand castles. I watched and fed the baby. And Mom and Dad took naps :)

Here is grandma, loving up her grandbaby. Peter just loves all those hugs and kisses. It was so hard to say goodbye.






After Tom's family left, we spent the next day at the beach. Then in the afternoon we went to visit Lynn at their place and she made us a feast for lunch. We also saw my sister in law Lori, her family, and Aunt Sara. The children played together and then went swimming and the next day we went to the beach again. That evening Lynn and the family came over to our place and we had dinner there. It was a lovely time and it went by much too quickly.
The next day my sister, her husband and children came to meet us at the beach.(I'll have pictures of them when she emails me some). The children collected sand crabs, built sand forts and castles, they caught waves with their boogie boards, and got some much needed sunshine. The grown ups enjoyed watching the children play on the beach and occasionally joined in the water and got knocked down by some waves. It was much cooler at the beach than in the south and we loved that break from the heat and humidity. Tom and Brian took the younger children crabbing one day and they caught a few crabs. Unfortunately, only one of the crabs was big enough to keep and eat. Anthony had a crying fit at the thought of killing the crab. So we all waited until he was distracted playing upstairs and then the crab was cooked quickly. When Anthony came downstairs he saw some of the children eating crab and he just joined right in and had a taste!
We walked on the Board Walk one evening and had some delicious fresh hot fries, enjoyed the sites and did some shopping. We ate chocolate and caramels from the Candy Kitchen. Before we knew it, it was our last night there. We had a last short visit with Lynn and Lori, and the rest of the family and our day was sadly over.
The last day there we had a big pancake breakfast and began our 15 hour trip back home. The day we left it was very sunny and beautiful. We stopped in N.C. for some rest and started back on the road the next morning. We were home by 4 p.m. and were able to make it to Sunday evening Mass. It was a great and exhausting time. The children and baby did very well with all the travel. And we couldn't ask for better weather on our way home.
The only downside to our trip was that we weren't able to see all our loved ones up north, and we were unable to take many pictures because our batteries died and we kept forgetting to buy some.



We sure miss you all and hope to see you soon!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SO great to hear about your trip, thanks for the update! I loved the story about Anthony and the crab, LOL...

I look forward to seeing you soon! Love you guys!!

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed our visits at the beach but it did go to fast. We loved seeing everyone and hope we can do it again. Love, Lori