On vacation?

My sister Debbie lives in Virginia Beach, VA. She is planning on finishing the remodel of her house and then put it on the market, so she invited us (my sister's children, my children and me) for a week of beach time. Well, I should say sort of beach time since we are redhaired/ fair skinned and so time at the beach is really from 5pm until 8:30 pm. Plus, since she is a resident, we only pay $2 for parking after 5 pm.

For those who know about the area, one way to get there is to travel along the bridge/tunnel system that connects the Delmarva peninsula to mainland Virginia. We left from Lancaster, PA around 2:30 in the afternoon, made a few stops, and arrived in Virginia Beach around 9 pm. We got off the bridge and BANG! some local kids shot out my back window! Thank God for tempered glass because the window was right beside my three year old's head. My insurance got my window replaced by the next day, but boy will this be a memorable vacation!

I had gotten a blow up pool for 6 at the end of the year clearance sales last year, so I brought it down. We put it in the backyard so that the kids could play in the water and be in the shade. Last night we built a Girl Scout campfire, made gluten-free smores, roasted hot dogs and got bitten by mosquitoes! I made homemade potato salad to enjoy with our hot dogs, but the girls were so full from the other stuff, that not much was eaten.

I have been the chief cook and bottle washer since arriving on Thursday night. It has been necessary so that our gluten free diet is taken care of, but also since my sister is really good at construction, but not so hot in the kitchen. I made up a menu so the kids could know in advance what we would be having and therefore would not be faced with a meal that they do not like. I even brought down my bread machine so that we could have fresh bread and use it to make pizza dough. The downside of this is that I am spending loads of time in the kitchen. I am beginning to appreciate my foremothers who were in the kitchen all the time!

MM has been in hog heaven. She loves her cousins and she is old enough to play with them without driving them too crazy. Right now she is getting into her bathing suit so that she can get into the pool with her cousins. We found a bathing suit that looks like a ballet outfit, complete with a too-too at Target. She already had a two piece bathing suit, but since we will be flying down to my parents' house to spend time there, she would need to have two suits. The most important reason is because she has recently decided that she wants to be a mermaid, ballerina, princess in a castle, Dora, Little Bill, Fairy, superhero.  I figured she can pretend to be a mermaid ballerina for now.