I'm Feelin' Beachy Keen!

Ok. I'm sorry for that horrible pun. It couldn't be helped. You see, I think my brain is still sitting on that beach, all sandy and a little fried...possibly a little wine soaked (shhh, don't tell anybody.)

We're home. It's good to be home. The house, for the record, was not a bachelor disaster when I returned last night. I attribute that to publically harrassing my husband about it on this site prior to leaving. I slept peacefully in my own bed without kicky little legs poking me in the back. Giuliana is happily playing with her long lost toys while I sit here, sipping coffee and posting. Yes, home is good. The weather, however, leaves a whole lot to be desired. Rain, fog, gray, ick. I'm longing for the S-U-N I left behind in Delaware. I googled their weather for today and though it's 85* (not 69* like here) it's just as gray and rainy there. I suppose that helps.

A few stories:

John and left town early Friday morning after dropping Giuliana off at her Aunt Gina's house. She rode with them to the shore. John and I had to make a detour to New York City so he could attend another doctor's appointment. It made for a long day. We made excellent time getting down to the city and had a couple of hours to kill, so we walked around and had a nice lunch at a deli. His appointment went well however the doctor was running 2 hours behind, so it was close to 3pm when we got out of there. He's a chatty guy and we told him we needed to get on the road so we could get to the beach. We got talking about the best ways to get out of the city, should we take the Lincoln Tunnel or the GW bridge. As I twittered about, this guy gave us his "secret directions" to the bridge, after both making us swear that we would use them and also that we wouldn't tell anyone else what they were. So, I'm sworn to secrecy, folks, sorry, but after a leisurely trip through Central Park and Harlem we arrived at the George Washington Bridge in about 20 minutes, a record time. We avoided at least an hour of sitting in traffic. Word, Dr. Weinburg.

John's dad arrived on Monday for a few days at the beach. He gets a little manic on occasion. He had decided that he wanted to bring all the seafood for our annual seafood feast. Awesome. So, he decided to go to the New Fulton's Fish Market in the Bronx so he could get the best deal. That required him to leave Binghamton at 1am, because you have to be at the fish market REALLY early to get the good stuff. So that's what he did. He arrived in Delaware at 10 am with a trunk load of seafood. Behold.


This, for those of you who were wondering, is what an entire BUSHEL of blue crab looks like. When John's dad gets an idea in his head, he sometimes tends to go overboard...but no one was complaining! Oh, and that box, is full of lobster.

Feisty suckers trying to escape their fate.

This is the fall out from lunch. All of those pots are filled with crab....lots and lots of crab...


And this is dinner. That's right. Lobster, crab, mussels, clams, shrimp scampi...John's family knows how to do it up RIGHT!! This is, by far, the most seafood I have ever eaten in an entire year, let alone one day! And we had left over crabs the next day, and mussels and clams the next three nights.


So, John had to leave on Tuesday. Which sucked. What also sucked was later that day, when I was talking to him on my cell phone at the beach. G wanted to say "hi" to daddy and we tussled a little bit over the phone, which, predictably, ended up in the bucket of water right next to her. Yeah. Salt water does funky things to an LG EnV2, let me just give you that heads up. It still doesn't work. But I visited Verizon today and they are sending me a brand new phone. So, que sera, sera, I guess.

Yesterday it was time to leave and G and I drove home by ourselves. Everyone else was in separete cars and they were making stops I wasn't planning on making, so we were on our own. I was a little bit nervous driving 6 hours with a toddler. Alone. But G, she was awesome. I should have known. She's such a good girl. She mostly played quietly in the back, took a long nap, sang some songs with me. There were a few moments of tears and whining and a few screams, but mostly, she dealt with it all in stride. The highlight, for me, though, was our lunch stop. I hadn't thought out the whole rest stop issue real well. See, it was PACKED. And I had to take in a diaper bag and my purse and carry a toddler on my hip and navigate the disgustingly dirty rest room scenerio without allowing G to catch typhoid and get her diaper changed on the dinky changing table and throw out the diaper across the room without her falling off, and then pack it all up and go order food in the insane line at the counter and then carry my tray, in one hand, with child on opposite hip and all those bags slung over my shoulder, get a drink from the soda fountain, and find an open table which happened to be on the other side of the place. It was fun.

Anyway, on to the main event, the pictures:

G and Daddy on the way to the beach.

G relaxing with Nana at the beach house.


Pre-dinner sand play.



This was a VERY good idea. My mom has an old sled from when I was a kid. She fills it with water and lets G splash in it at her house. I borrowed it and brought it to the beach. It worked great for playing in the sand, and as a bonus, it worked even better for carting stuff to and from the beach...just pile everything on it and drag it across the sand! This is G and Dante (her cousin).



My sister-in-law Gina and her two girls, Alana and Sophia. Alana did not want to participate in this picture, can you tell?

Getting packed up to go home, all crispy and tan!

The first thing G said to me when she woke up yesterday morning was "Home, Mama?" I said, "Yes, that's right, we're going home today, did you remember that?" And she said, "Yeah, Hiiiiiiiiiiiii, Dada!"

That's right, baby, home and Daddy. It's good to be home. As I'm writing this, the sun has poked out. Time to go outside and play and enjoy the rest of summer while it lasts.