Vacation!!!!!!

Friends Are A Good Thing To Have!!!

     My friend Jayme - one of my best friends since we were on the same floor of the dorms back in Freshman year, (which was 15 freaking years ago...starting to feel a little bit old here) - has a pretty cool family. While they live just outside of Corvallis - (Go Beavers)  - they have a cabin in one of the canyons in Utah that they would travel to in the summertime. Since Jayme was in school at The BYU - (Quick story about the "The" in "The BYU." There is a certain University in Ohio that thinks that they are the greatest thing on earth since sliced bread...in fact they will probably tell you that they invented sliced bread. (It was actually invented by an Ophthalmologist from Missouri.) While most State Universities have simple names like Oregon State University, Arizona State University, or Boise State University, this particular school's name actually includes a "the" at the beginning - The Ohio State University. It is ridiculously pretentious and snooty, which totally matches the people who go to school there. Anyway, Beki and I think that this fits with BYU so we have taken to calling it The BYU.) anyway, since Jayme was in school he would drive up to the cabin to hangout with his family, and, as his roommate I got to invoke the "roommate clause" and tag along. Now it so happens that Jayme's family also has a beach house in Bethany Beach, Delaware that they would visit every year or two.  When we moved out to Maryland Jayme's family invited us to the beach house and we have gone 3 out of the last 4 summers.

Holiday Weekend Traffic 

     So with the way that schedules and things happened, we had to travel to Delaware on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, otherwise known as The Worst Traffic Day in the History of the Universe!!! The trip to the beach should take 2 1/2 hours - depending on if you run into tractors or things, since most of the trip is on country highways. The country highway thing is pretty important here, because when the entire population who are living inland are trying to get to the coast, and there is only one road that goes there, you end up with the first hour of your trip taking 3 1/2 hours. (Luckily the last hour and a half only took an hour and a  half.)

 This is pretty much the view that we had for 3 hours... brake-lights

 Cars as far as the eyes can see!!!

 This just seemed odd to me. It was a U-Turn lane. Not a turn lane, there was no where to turn left, it was just for U-Turns.

The Beach!!!!!!!!!!!!

     Our patience paid off in the end and we were greatly rewarded with an excellent weekend at the beach. One of the things that made the weekend so good is the fact that the Beach House is located in a private community, which means that it has access to a private beach. This is very significant, which I shall now demonstrate:

 This is the view of the crowd hanging out on the private beach, lots of space to hang out and play.

And if you look to the right from the private beach you can see all of the poor people hanging out down at the public beach...

...

...

I can not imagine being stuck in that mass of humanity!

 So happy to be at the beach!!!

 The first time that we went to the beach Owen was 2, and wanted nothing to do with the ocean, it was too big and scary. Last year he would play near the water, occasionaly getting his feet wet. This year he was all over the place playing in the waves - once or twice he got sent rolling by a big wave, but once he realized that he was still alive he would get up and run back in again!

 That whale that looks like it is about to beach itself would be me...

 Of all of the beach activities, Owen likes digging in the sand the best!

 Mommy hanging out in the waves!

 This was another one of Owen's games. We would throw balls into the waves and then run after them and get them when they washed back in. (Sometimes he would get so fixated on getting the ball that he would chase it down as the waves pulled back into the see, setting himself up for the next wave to send him flying! To his credit this only happened once or twice before he learned that he needed to run away from the big waves!)

 One of the first things that must be done when going to the beach is that you must dig a big hole for the kids to jump in. With High Tide coming in the hole was getting overrun by waves, which made it even better in the kid's minds!

 While it looks like Owen and Beki are dancing in the waves, this is actually the boy changing his mind about going into the ocean. He got his jacket on and got down there, and then decided..."hmmm maybe not."

 However, mommy was not about to give up so easily...

 Papa went back for a boogie board...

 And suddenly all complaining and thoughts of getting out of the ocean vanished!

Happy Times!!!

 This is the little beach cart that we took as an offering for the beach house. We saw it at Costco and thought that it would be a good idea, but we underestimated its usefullness. We loaded this thing up every trip up and back, it made life super easy. (Except if you were the guy who had to pull it up the sand dune, the it sucked...)

4th of July Parade!!!

     What would the 4th of July be without a parade? (Lame of course) Bethany Beach had their parade at noon, but we had to set up chairs around 9am to reserve a good spot. (A good spot is one near the road so that the "kids" can get candy!!) We got there a bit before noon, but since we were near the end of the route we had some time to wait. If you have ever been to a parade with children, you know that they LOVE waiting around for things to happen. (I am always a little unsure how I feel about parades. I know that you are thinking, "how on earth could you not love parades?" What you must remember is that 90% of all parades I have been to, I have not been watching, I have been participating. Marching in a parade sucks pretty bad, but  being the director "directing" the band while marching along with it is not so bad. When I do get to sit and watch a parade I spend the entire time either 1) Feeling bad for the Tuba Players, 2) Complaining about how they put the bands and musical acts too close together, 3) Complaining about how there is too much space between entries, or 4) Trying to eat my sons candy!!!)

 Sometimes when you want to take a picture of the boy, something like this happens instead...

 But if you take it away, then he just gives you a look like this.

 Remember how I said that the children LOVE waiting? Well it turns out that goes for Papa as well.

 Hmm...Like father like son?

 The people at the house across the street set up this thing that looked like a port-o-potty, except when you turned the handle to go in, it turned on a shower head at the top! This became the #1 entertainment for the boy, maybe more than the parade itself.

Wet and Happy!!!

 We - (And by we I mean me) - were wondering if there would be any bands in this parade, and I was very pleased that there were quite a few!

 As a beach town they have all sorts of interesting trolleys and buses and things. Owen thought this trolley was pretty neat.

 Especially when they threw him candy!!

 What a BIG Firetruck!!

 Hello Mr. Fireman!!!

 The Juggler wasn't the best, but good enough to capture the attention of the boy.

 This group may have been my favorite - A band of Banjos and Saxophones wearing Lederhosen!!

 Just watching the parade with Papa.

 This entry blew the boys mind...Santa Claus vacations in Bethany Beach!!!

Fireworks and Glowsticks!!!

     Jayme has an uncle and aunt who live near Bethany Beach. (Their house looks out on Indian River Bay, where the river meets the ocean...it is possibly the greatest location for a house that I have ever seen.) For the 4th they had all of the family over to their house for dinner and fireworks. The drive over was a bit harry because the heavens opened and unleashed a furious downpour upon us! (Another thing that I don't understand about the east coast - Why in the hell do they not crown their roads? Think about the roads where you live, go outside and look at it if you need to. Is the middle of the road just a little bit higher so that the water will run off and not collect in the middle of the road? They don't do that here...in fact it almost seems that the middle of the roads here and designed to collect the rain water. And then the people act surprised when their roads flood. It rains ALL THE TIME here, this water collecting on the roads thing is not new, they just refuse to admit that maybe their way of doing things isn't the best - kind of like China and the fork...)

Luckily the rain stopped in time for us to get things set up and have a wonderful dinner and conversation with a bunch of people who really had no clue who I was, but were accepting of me anyway! Before we got to fireworks we had a preliminary Potato-Gun show!

 Notice the children gathered to watch the launching of the potato!!

 What says "Happy 4th of July" more than Ice Cream and Potato Guns?

 FIRE!!!

They had a Badminton net set up, and Owen wanted to play. He wouldn't let me show him how to do it, but Jayme's cousin was "coach" so he helped the boy out!

These glowstick pictures were actually taken over two nights, but I didn't feel like separating them into 3rd of July, 4th of July sections, so I put them all together...

 The person glowing with a green necklace here is the boy, however most of the time he looked like this...

 A giant blur of color!!!

 Here is another look for the boy.

Papa in my mild mannered 80's glowing headband, make me angry however, and I change into....

 The Mayan God of Glowstick!!!!

The firework show put on by Jayme's uncle Buzz was top notch, (and also illegal, but really, what quality firework show isn't.) 

 Buzz had to drive 4 states away to get these bad boys!!

 Definitely worth the drive if you ask me!!

Playing Well With Others!!!

    Owen loves playing with other children - how well he plays with others is always up for debate - but all of the kids got along pretty well together.

 Owen was always nice to baby Elyssa!!!

 While I was NOT an acceptable holder according to Elyssa, Beki was.

 Jayme's nephews Keegan (age 7) and Kayden (age 4) love to be silly...needless to say Owen was right at home!

 Zerbert!!!!!!!

 Dance Party!!!

 Little Kids and their sweet moves!!!

We went into town for lunch and to get the boy a souvenir shirt - and of course he promptly just started playing with the bag!!

 They have good ice cream at the beach...as you can see, the boy went face first into his!!

The town of Bethany Beach actually postponed their fireworks because of the storm on the 4th, so we went down the next night before we left to watch them. However by this point the boy was all funned out, and fell asleep during the firework show! (I feel sorry for friends who have children that have complete meltdowns when they get too tired - mine just falls asleep.)

Vacation was fun...we are going to need a Vacation to recover from our Vacation, but I'm pretty sure that we  made some pretty good memories!!