Mairsy Dotes

Vacation recap in bullets! 🙂

• Left early Wednesday (7/1). I had splurged and bought a new portable DVD player that had TWO screens. Best money I’ve ever spent, I tellya. We didn’t have to listen to a single argument about who got to have the screen closest to her, who was hogging the screen, how no one could see the screen, etc.  The screens attached to the driver and passenger seat headrests. It was a beautiful thing. The entire family worked on their Chinese, thanks to nearly 200 minutes of “Ni Hao Kai Lan“.
• We stayed at a new beach house this year:

• It was nearly 100 steps to get to the beach, down (or up) a long concrete staircase that I didn’t photograph, because frankly: I’m perfectly OK forgetting that part of the trip. My calves ached all vacation long!

The view from the top of the staircase…

• The house wasn’t as nice as the one we’ve stayed in in the past, but it cost about a third as much, so you have to expect it. Apparently: My mother and future sister-in-law were expecting just as nice for 2/3 less. They complained about the kitchen, they complained about the furniture, they complained about the beds, they complained about the stairs, they complained about the silverware, they complained about the dishsoap the rental agency provided,  they complained about just about everything. Me? I was thinking, “You’re at the fucking BEACH. Shut your yap and stop ruining my vacation!”  I was told that because I didn’t complain as much, clearly I had the more comfortable bed and didn’t cook as often.Yeah. That’s TOTALLY it.
• Thursday morning, I awoke suddenly to Nea’s face about three inches from mine. Staring at me intently, she announced, “I want to go on a beach walk. You said I need a grown up with me.” and then waited, rather pointedly. So I got up, and we went on a beach walk. I found the BIGGEST piece of beach glass I’d ever seen. About two-and-a-half inches long, and about an inch-and-a-half wide.  That was how the sea told me she was happy I was back (and willing to brave nearly 100 concrete steps to get to her).
• We did a LOT of beachcombing this trip–more than usual. It was a great beach for it, because it had a little “debris field” of rocks where things would get hung up when the tide went out. We found a lot of beach glass, and a TON of agates, some really cool rocks, and even a few shells that survived the beating they got from the breakers. I generally went beach combing twice a day, especially once the low tides shifted to a decent time of day.
• The weather was not that great, and Sarah (my brave, fearless Viking Baby of last year) was absolutely terrified of the ocean, so: not a whole lot of sandcastleing took place. The beach house had a backyard, and they spent a lot of time back there, playing. It wasn’t the same.
• We played a lot of drunken “Scattergories”, and I did a lot of knitting in front of the fire.
• Fourth of July we were completely fogged in. We couldn’t see the beach from our beachfront house! So we oooh’d and aaaah’d over some colored fog for a minute, then gave up and went inside to play more drunken Scattergories.
• M had to leave early to get back here for work (boo!). This made me incredibly cranky, because what’s more fun on vacation than being a single mother, right? Wheeeeeee….
• Monday, after M left at the azz crack of dawn, I got up and went on a beach walk to get all the sad/mad out so that when I saw the girls I could be excited that we still had two whole days at THE BEACH, and hopefully prevent the, “Our Daddy Had to Leave and We Miss Him” death spiral. Monday I was the grateful recipient of another lavish gift from the sea. Our beach house was near some very large rocks, that were normally out pretty far into the water. Certainly not reachable. But that morning, the tide was low enough that you could actually go down INSIDE this huge rock.

At the time, I only had my camera phone with me. I took these pictures the next morning when I took Nea back with me. We saw a PURPLE starfish. The photo doesn’t even begin to do it justice. It was like Playdough emperial purple.

Nea loves to touch the sea anenomes, and check out the tidepools, so she was in heaven!

You can kind of see the size of the rocks in this shot. We’re at the opening of the “cave”.  (As an aside: the purple starfish was about the same purple as her crocs. It was amazing!)

Perhaps a budding marine biologist?

Starfish sex…

This is a picture of the “sea cave” when the tide was coming in. As you can see: it’s not a place you could normally get to in any sort of safe manner, since it’s usually under quite a bit of water and gets some pretty impressive breakers crashing against it. It’s pretty cool that we got to go down in there and see stuff.

• We also went hiking to Drift Creek Falls. It was a short hike (1.5 miles in and out) and not terribly challenging, but fun! Sarah insisted on hiking the entire way in, and got pissed when we insisted on carrying her out on our shoulders. I knew there was no way she was up to a three-mile hike at 27-months old. The hike went to a suspension bridge over a water fall!

Tall trees…

Two little hobbits…

The waterfall…

Look at the size of that cedar stump…

• We had a campfire on the beach our last evening there. That was really fun, and definitely is something that needs to become tradition. There’s just something about seeing your childrens’ faces covered with ketchup, chocolate, marshmallow, and sand that does a vacationing mother’s heart good.

Nea playing on driftwood…

Because the weather had been so unfriendly to the idea of playing on the beach, we sent all our kick-ass beach toys back home with M. Sarah was reduced to playing in the sand with an old beer cap (whoo! You can just hand me that Mother of the Year tiara right now, people). Later, she found some clam shells to dig with, which made me feel like a better mother.

Nea enjoying her very first fire-roasted hotdog.

Sarah, evidencing her displeasure at not being allowed to walk on the beach with Grammy and Papa (how cute is her fury?!)…

All in all, it was still a great vacation–even with the complaining, the steps, missing M, bad weather, the slightly not-as-nice beach house. I wouldn’t give up any of it (well, maybe the complaining and the missing M part…). We stayed there a full seven days, which ROCKED. I wasn’t really any more ready to leave than I ever am, but I didn’t feel like there was anything I wanted to do that I didn’t get to do, I just wanted to do more of it. We ate crab, we walked on the beach, I bought a quilt that reminds me of the ocean and the desert, I knit, we played with the girls, we found beach glass, we drank a LOT of wine, we shopped, M and I went on a beach walk and were accompanied part of the way by a sea lion. It was good.

Now: time to plan next year’s trip! 🙂

PS: Please let me know if you can see these pictures. Since they’re all off my computer, I’m not sure if people accessing the site from somewhere other than my computer will be able to see them. Which would suck. And I would find a way to remote host them, just for y’all. 😀

We’re back from vacation, and none of us are overly excited about it. I’m working on a summary post, but for now: I’m buried under piles of laundry, souveniers, and suitcases. I’ll have to do a little digging out before I feel right about sitting down and luxuriating in a blog post. Plus, my brother has my netbook, Pheobe, so I’m feeling a little limpy without her.

In the meantime: if you ever have the opportunity to pick up the above featured book, I highly recommend that you do so. The story is sweet, the illustrations are amazing, and Linnea wants it read to her at least 37 times a day. Plus, it’s from Berkley Breathed, Mr. Bloom County himself! What’s not to love about that? 🙂