Maine, Round 1

I'm barely a quarter of the way through all the photos, and I'm already overwhelmed. So many good ones to choose from! Must post for posterity! Whelp, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to bore you with multiple photo-heavy, text-light posts.

We left off at the end of our first day of vacation, merrily swimming in the lake and falling into exhausted heaps (what with the whole "4 a.m. wake-up" we suffered through). Our first full day in Maine had us heading up the Songo River. We boated in style:

Wasn't it a beautiful quiet morning for a boat ride?

 

SOMEONE demanded a snack within the first 10 minutes of the outing, per usual.

 

Then again, the rest of us WERE having Bloody Mary's, so I guess it was only fair

M. and Finn fished (no takers to be had)

My mom :-)

Sporting some new Spiderman sunglasses

We traveled through the Songo River lock before stopping to take a quick dip off the boat in Brandy Pond. Then we headed under the bridge into Long Lake (scene of the Great Crane Crash of 2011) for lunch and ice cream at Rick's:

Have you ever seen a cuter ice cream face?

 

Lucy fell asleep on the chilly, quick ride back home, just like this - on her Grammy's lap, clutching a teddy bear, snuggled under a blanket

Later that night we roast marshmallows and made s'mores

The next day, Monday, started out rainy/cloudy, so Lucy played dress up with a flower girl dress that I wore when 6-year-old me was in my Aunt Robin and Uncle Tom's wedding (handmade by Robin's mom!):

 

 My dad took me, M., and Finn on a 3-mile hike/walk that involved some fun woodsy scrambling and WAY too many horse flies, while Lucy and my mom baked brownies. At some point (that day? the next day?), there was more beautiful scenery and fishing:

There was also kayak-purchasing (we added two kid-sized kayaks to my parents' collection of boats), ice cream eating, actual kayaking (Finn was a rock star! Lucy mostly just let us do all the work while we towed her along), and jet ski driving (not my favorite activity!), and lots more swimming and hot-tubbing.

Tuesday afternoon my sister Kristin arrived with her three kids (and thus ended the quiet part of our vacation).

Next up - more photos! Of cousins! Stay tuned.

Back to Life

Back to Reality

Come on, you were thinking it too, right? A little Soul II Soul?

Moving along. Yes, we are back from a great, fun-filled, altogether too short (even though it was 8 days!) vacation in Maine. Yesterday found us, yet again, cursing the New Jersey turnpike (common theme of every return car trip from up north) and scrambling for alternate routes. But we made it back, safe and sound, only 4 Lucy meltdowns and 12 hours after leaving Lake Sebago. And we are back to reality with a bang - a kitchen full of ants (gah!), last-minute brown bag lunches for the kids with the scraps of bread I managed to find in the fridge, a weird beeping noise coming from our Verizon internetty-box-thing, a less-than-functional air conditioner in M.'s car, hundreds of e-mails to sort through, and piles of luggage contents to put away.

But first M. and I made our vacation last just a teensy bit longer with Thai take out and a (far-too-expensive) bottle of wine in front of the TV last night. Austerity be damned, I guess!

I have over 200 photos to sort through for a proper debriefing (assuming I get around to doing one). But I will share a few photos now from our first day of vacation, which was perhaps the most horrible and also most glorious. From 4:25 a.m. on, we spent about 9 happy-ish hours in the car with the kids (yes! I said happy! Good moods all around, and the kids were really good!). Then we hit the Saturday afternoon Massachusetts/N.H./Maine beach traffic, and groaned through the last 3+ hours of our trip. It was painfully slow, and we got to my parents house about 2 hours later than I wanted to.

Within minutes, we had swim suits on, coolers packed, and we were off on the boat for an early evening cocktail cruise and swim. We anchored the boat just off shore, and jumped right into the lake. All the stress of the drive was rinsed away in the just-the-right-temperature water. The kids goofed around with my parents, my brother, and his girlfriend, we had some snacks and drinks, and we watched the sun get lower in the sky. It was the perfect start to a vacation, really.

 

Who gave this kid a license?

 

Even scarier :-)

 

 

 

See? Relaxing.

Maine, we will be back!!

Gone Fishin'

4:15 in the morning on Saturday found us doing this:

Driving... (Delaware's largest feature)

Sleeping (for a bit)

Not sleeping - at all

Admiring my fun, vacation-colored toes

And after many, many hours of driving (12 and a half, to be exact), we made it here:

Worth it, no?

There has been boating

And hiking

Right after this photo, I raced this guy up a super steep hill. We got to the top and he reached out to feel my racing heart, a huge grin on his face. Vacationing rocks (literally and figuratively).

And kayaking (that's the kids in the mini kayaks behind us - new acquisitions for the "On The Rocks" flotilla (On The Rocks being the name of my parents' lake house)

 We're still busy relaxing, more photos to come later!

Travelin' (Day I Can't Remember)

The theme this week at daycare is "On Vacation," and tomorrow all the kids are going to bring in suitcases and whatnot, and pretend to go to Jamaica. Lucy's class made passports, and the kids were told to pack their own bags - no help from parents allowed.

 

You should see the stuff they have in these bags. Guaranteed there are no socks, and they both almost forgot underwear. But Finn has a ghost stuffed animal and Lucy grabbed quite a bit of jewelry, so all set, right?

I think I'll probably do the packing when we leave for Maine at the end of the month.

The sad thing is that Lucy is convinced they actually ARE going to Jamaica.  She's already managed to melt down on us when we've tried to correct her, so we've resorted to nodding and agreeing when she tells us about the plane she's going to ride on tomorrow. We'll let her teachers take the hit on that one.

Speaking of going on planes and vacationing (a bit), I spent the past Saturday, Sunday, and Monday up in Massachusetts with my family. I flew up for my grandfather's memorial service, and the timing was such that it also allowed me to join in on a casual bachelorette party for my friend Helen, who's getting married in a couple of weeks. Even though I was up for a sad purpose, I absolutely loved seeing so much family and hanging out with friends I don't get to see enough.

Here are some photos from the bachelorette part of the weekend. My sister Stacey stole my thunder by posting a lot of these on Facebook already, but I'll take photographer's liberty by posting them again:

 

The bride in her mandatory accessories

 

We decked out the Mom-mobile we drove

 

From left: Amy, Natalie, Helen, Kristin, Stacey, me

 

First stop was Chauncey's Creek in Kittery Point, ME, for waterside lobstahs and BYOW (bring your own wine)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wearing a bib and playing with her food... :-)

 

 

 

The second stop was a scenic overlook for some more pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They "made" my sisters and me pose like Wilson Phillips on these rocks

 

The third stop was at the New Hampshire state liquor store (not pictured, but awesome), then it was on to ice cream at Benson's:

 

 

 Finally, we headed back to my parent's house for some presents, pizza, games, and movies (Pitch Perfect, which I still love, second time around).

I'm super excited to come back up in just a week and a half - this time, M. and I will be driving with the kids all the way up to my parents' place in Maine, and then we'll head down to Massachusetts by ourselves one night for Helen's wedding. Can't wait!