One Last Hurrah or How to Successfully Avoid Vegetables for 4 Days

How is it that you can go on vacation, whether for a weekend, 4 days, a week, whatever, and still feel like you need a vacation from that vacation?  What exactly is a vacation supposed to be?  Is it comprised of doing lots of stuff until you're ready to drop from exhaustion, or is it a relaxing time to do absolutely nothing?  I guess it depends on the person.  But I suspect that we may not see the latter until Samantha is much older and can go entertain herself. 

We're exhausted after 4 days at the beach, staying in my uncle's condo 1/2 block from the ocean (with some wonderful views from the windows).  Exhausted, but we really did have an awful lot of fun.  The weather was definitely not "beach" weather in the classic sense, but was still just perfect.  You couldn't really go into the water because the air was too cool so we never bothered with bathing suits.  Somehow there's something sweeter and more poignant (is that the right word to use here?) about people wandering around on the beach in their regular clothes, pant legs rolled up, feet bare.  It evokes more of a feeling of spontaneity and frivolity (love both of those words).

Samantha loves the beach.  She talked about going to the beach every day, multiple times a day, for the entire week prior.  Every night before bed she'd say something about going to the beach when she wakes up, and every morning when she woke up she'd say something about going to the beach today.  We had to keep telling her, "No, we're going to the beach on Friday.  Today's only MondayTuesdayWednesday."  She talked about it the entire 4-hour car ride there.  "Beach?" she'd say, optimistically, in what I can only assume is her version of "Are we there yet?"  I guess it was a nice break from her previous fixation on Santa coming to visit, but I think that may be back again in the near future...

Probably the most relaxing part of the trip came when she completely occupied herself digging in the sand on Saturday afternoon and allowed Steve and me to have about half-an-hour to play frisbee a few feet away.  Yep, we actually were able to do something different than what she was doing, confident that she was engrossed enough not to get bored or feel the need to wander off.  That was proof enough that she loves the beach. 

She had a first experience on a boardwalk ride all by herself, which started out with laughter, smiles and waves, but ended, in the last minute, in tears (not sure why - perhaps she got dizzy?)...

Sammi was thrilled to have Mema and Pops come to babysit her on Saturday night so Steve and I could toddle off to Atlantic City for a few hours and blow money we had no business blowing (just kidding - it wasn't much, and was only a small price to pay for an hour of entertainment).  She got spoiled silly, having pizza for supper with an ice cream cone for dessert, along with an evening wander on the sand.  Pizza and ice cream.  Yum.  I don't think any of us ate anything even resembling the color green while we were there.  It's so hard to find healthy options for a 4-year old with a limited palate (and two 40-somethings) when travelling.  Even though the condo had a full kitchen, we just didn't want to cook on such a short stay.  I guess it's because we didn't want to deal with the mess, and didn't want to have to figure out what to do with leftovers.  And because we were on vacation and were being lazy (the more likely reason).

Sunday we were lucky enough to have a visit from our bloggy friends, Kelli and Colin.  Colin is a serious cutie, and was more than happy to show off his brand new crawling skills!!!  I really enjoyed chatting with Kelli while Samantha showed Colin how to share (not).  I'm so happy they made the drive down to where we were, and hope we can meet up again some time.

A last hurrah until next year, our official farewell to summer...