After a busy day full of teaching dottery class and attending birthday parties, we hopped in the minivan and drove to Delaware, to the beach-town cottage where Anna and her family had just arrived the day before. We got there late, but Anna was kind enough to stay up and let us in before stumbling off to bed. We followed her example and went right to sleep, expecting all the kids to be up bright and early the next morning.

All three kids were kind enough to sleep in the next morning, not getting us up till after 7am. We ate cereal and pastries for breakfast and drank our coffee in a leisurely fashion while the kids played. Then we suited up and sunblocked everyone and headed for the beach!

It was so much fun! Since Annalie has lost her fear of the ocean, she loves the beach. And with so many adults there, she was able to play in the water as much as she wanted, only taking occasional breaks to play in the sand or have a drink. She had an enthusiastic water buddy in Anna’s son, J. They had a blast chasing the waves and each other around the beach.

But the best water buddy of all for Annalie was Troy. Dads are great when it comes to big waves that threaten to knock you down. They either grab your hand and haul you up quickly, sputtering and wiping salt from your eyes, or they just pick you up and swing you above the wave! Annalie loved doing both. I was kind of amazed at how many times she was knocked onto her knees or butt by a wave, yet came up laughing.

After a few hours in the sun and water, we were all hungry. Anna’s husband M and Troy, with Apple* tagging along, walked to a nearby pizza place and came back with some delicious pizzas that we devoured and two huge insulated jugs of soda plastered with the restaurant logo. Those cups kept tripping me out, because to me the logo seemed similar to an old logo for my favorite hometown pizza place. I’d see them out of the corner of my eye and be startled for a second before realizing it was a different logo entirely. Funny how that can happen.

*In case you’re wondering, Apple is not Anna’s daughter’s real name. It’s her blog name.

After lunch the kids went back in the water with the dads for a little while, but soon we were all ready to go home and cool off. So we packed up and made the short walk back to the cottage, where we enjoyed using the outdoor shower.

After everyone was cleaned up, M and Apple laid down for a nap. We got the big kids set up for some quiet time watching movies with the portable DVD player in the bedroom. Troy found something to watch on TV. And Anna and I decided, naturally, to go paint some pottery.

There happens to be a cool little craft studio on the main street of Anna’s beach town, and she’d been walking by and peeking in the windows for years, but had never gone inside. So we changed that! Anna had never painted pottery before, but she’d been painting houses for years, thanks to working for her dad, so she was a natural at pottery-painting.

I dotteried two little things, a star magnet for Melissa and a green bowl for Sonja. I was happy to find two little things to paint, because this particular place had a per-hour studio fee. I understood why—they’re on the beach, they probably have lots of tourists as customers and need to keep things flowing; and they guarantee your pieces will be fired by the next day, which of course means the fee will be higher than usual—but I still didn’t want to have to pay for more than an hour of painting! Also, we didn’t want to be gone all afternoon and leave Troy and M outnumbered by tired and hungry kids. So we painted, chatted, laughed, and walked back home.

On the way home from the craft studio, something funny happened: I was spotted in the wild by a blog reader! I didn’t know about it till we were back at home and she left a comment on a blog post. She wasn’t entirely sure it was me because Annalie wasn’t with me, I was in the wrong town, and she was a bit shy of saying hello to a total stranger. I emailed back in reply to her comment, saying I completely understood why she hadn’t said anything to me, but that I wished she had, that it would have been a hoot to have a blog reader recognize me on the street. I asked where she had seen me, exactly, and she emailed me back to tell me that she saw me on this street at that time by such-and-such building, and as it happened I remembered seeing her too! Crazy! For future reference, if any of you normal, friendly, non-stalker blog readers happen to pass me somewhere on the street, please feel free to stop me and say hello. I promise I don’t bite and I’ll even say hello back.

Photo by i am BeachMama

After our unknowing encounter with Miss Virginia, Anna and I continued home where we found hungry people waiting for us. We walked to a fun Italian place, where Annalie and J made good use of the play-dough I keep stashed in my purse for entertaining bored kids at restaurants while we’re waiting for food. Some of the TVs in the restaurant were showing an episode of Amen, which amused me greatly. I had completely forgotten about that late-80s show, both that it existed and that I ever watched it. But even without being able to hear the sound, I could hear the theme song in my head as the credits played.

We ate the delicious food, we walked back to the cottage, we packed up, we hugged our hosts good-bye and thanked them profusely for letting us crash their beach vacation. Then we headed home after a long, delightful weekend so we could start doing laundry and packing for our trip to Omaha later that week. We just don’t know how to stay in one place, do we?

The last weekend of June, we packed a lot of fun into a few short days. In addition to teaching the dottery class, we attended two birthday parties in one day and then drove four hours to the beach to hang out with Anna and her family, before driving three hours back home the next night. Whew! It was crazy but totally worth it.

First, we went to Karalyn’s 6th birthday party. It was a puppies-and-kittens party! The kids did puppy- and kitten-themed crafts and played games. The parents who hung out either helped as they were needed, pretended they were paparazzi, or hung out chatting, eating snacks, and passing around baby Kate.

Jill decorated Karalyn’s cake with an assortment of Littlest Pet Shop toys and candy bones, and there were also cupcakes with puppy and kitten toppers.

The weather was HOT that day, so the classic fill-the-buckets water relay game was especially welcome.

The party officially ended after a couple of hours, but we stuck around, eating Jill and Andy’s food and visiting with friends. It was particularly nice to see Angela and her girls, who had come from Indiana for a long visit just in time for the party. It was so nice to see them, in fact, that Angela and I lost track of time as we blathered away and we were late leaving for the next birthday party…

…for Jack! It’s hard to believe our adorable godson is already four years old, but it’s true.

We celebrated by climbing all over the PlayPlace and eating Happy Meals and Ronald McDonald cake and sundaes, because that’s the kind of birthday party smart parents plan when they have a tiny newborn daughter to take care of!

Did I mention the sundaes? They came with mini M&M’s and Oreo bits for topping. Those sundaes were a big hit.

Can you tell these two goofballs are related? They both posed like that, without prompting, when I pointed my camera at them.

Basically, a great time was had by all—what kid doesn’t love a McD’s PlayPlace?—and no one had to clean up their house or clean up after the party. Win! And with that, we said our good-byes and headed out to our minivan to make the long drive to the beach.

I was gonna write about the beach too, but this post is long enough and our trip to the beach deserves its own post. Standby…