Beach (8/4-5)

Thanks to the Q's for another great time at the beach! Lots of beach time, our traditional crabfest, and extra long Twizzlers!
My handsome boys.

Steven has turned into a fish.

Andrew is an awesome skimboarder.

This year the boys buried each other. Andrew was first and I gave him a shell bra, later we added a shell cup. Lots of laughs. Steven and Joe were buried later with similar pictures.

Heck of a Weekend :-(

I came down with strep throat (thankfully made it into the dr. on Friday morning). Guess I didn't catch it soon enough because it really knocked me on my rear for nearly 2 days.

Friday morning I saw Kendyl playing with her left ear, but didn't think too much of it. Well she ended up getting sick for Tim Friday night and was not herself Saturday morning, so we made an appointment for her. Her first sick visit to the dr. in 22 months! Turns out I was right, she has an ear infection, but in the opposite ear than I thought....weird. She was a bit cranky and clingy today, but didn't seem like she was in too much pain. Hopefully she'll be back to her normal, fun, happy self tomorrow.

So the boys have been taking care of the girls in our house this weekend.

Crazy Day!

7 am - Tim and Steven left for Cub Scout Camp. They will be there until Wednesday. I have already received a call that they are having an amazing time!

10am - Kendyl finally woke up! Woohoo! I don't know what I did to deserve her sleeping so late, but it was nice. I slept until 9, then had some time to catch up on e-mail and some Tivo'd shows. Oh, then we woke Andrew.

11:30ish - we left for the zoo. The weather was iffy, but I found a site with hour by hour weather that said it would stop raining and just be cloudy/clearing and a thunderstorm would roll in at dinner time. After we packed lunch, drinks, etc. and go to get in the car....it was raining! So we hopped in the car anyway and decided to play it by ear.

I got a bright idea that if it was still raining near the zoo, we would just keep going and go to the aquarium. Sure, it would be $$, but it would be a nice treat. Well Andrew and I got excited about it and decided to do the aquarium (and it was iffy). We get to the aquarium and the parking lot was full and the line to get in was wrapped around the building! We decided to brave the weather and do the zoo. I was not waiting an hour just to get in the aquarium and then deal with crowds inside too.

$4 to cross the bridge, back to the zoo and thankfully it was not raining! It was almost 1:00 so we saw a few animals then stopped for lunch. Kendyl was so cute eating a cheese sandwich like a big girl (we don't usually give her sandwiches). Then she stole my Reeses Big Cup!

I went to take a picture of the big turtles....I forgot to put the camera card back in the camera!!!! No pictures today.

While we were looking at the orangutan it started to pour. We had a good time watching them, as always, but this time 1 was outside with some other monkeys. They were quite active. We decide to head out into the rain and make the most of it. Over to the lions and tigers as there is some shelter there. One tiger was in the water and Kendyl loved watching him. Suddenly he got out (1/2 way) and pooped in the water for all to see! Andrew and Kendyl got a kick out of that. She even ran over to me (after watching) with her hands over her mouth to tell me about it.

Then we headed for the carousel. Kendyl loved this! She rode a butterfly. The rain stopped while we were on the ride. We then headed for the new Aviary which was very nice, but much smaller than it looks.

Onto the bears. Kendyl loves playing in the fountain. She was soaked!

We saw so many animals and had lots of fun. Because of the weather, it wasn't too crowded, but more than I thought.

Usually we get ice cream while we were there, but all of the seats were wet. Andrew and I decided to head home for ice cream instead and made it Coldstone Creamery....and ice cream dinner! Yumm.

Oh, and to add to our crazy day, I made a wrong turn on the way home that I never do! And we got home just in time before a storm rolled in. Luckily the power was only out for about 2 minutes. Kendyl doesn't like storms, but Andrew came to the rescue with glow necklaces that quickly took her mind off the storms. He's a great big brother!

Boys Take a Segway Class (8/5)

Andrew has been wanting to do a segway tour for quite awhile, but he is not old enough. At the beach this week, we happened to pass this segway place on kids night. They offered 1/2 hour classes for kids 9-15 in their store. We made reservations for later in the evening, went back to the house for dinner and packing and made this our last stop in Sea Isle City before heading home.
Andrew, Steven and Joe (their good friend who we were staying with) were the only ones in the 8:30 class. She got each of them comfortable on the segway, then they played games for the rest of the class to perfect their skills. They earned points for winning each game and the overall winner (Andrew) won a prize. They played a lot of fun games in 1/2 hour.


Afterwards, the adults were able to try their hand at the segway. Funny! It really is quite easy and doesn't take long to get used to. I wish I had a longer time to play and get comfortable with it. I can't wait for them to be old enough so we can take a family tour...it will be so much fun!

They both had such a great time, they can't stop talking about it!

Camp Horseshoe (8/1)

Andrew was at Boy Scout camp this week and yesterday(8/1) was family day. I have never been to the scout camps before (since Tim is usually with them) so I was excited to see where he was staying. Steven and I went for family day (Tim and Kendyl stayed home as it was a long day 2-10).

I stopped along the side of the road for the pictures above!

Here is Andrew's tent (and Josh). Yikes! Thankfully he had a good one that didn't leak as there were storms almost every night this week. There sides were up for inspection which everyone passed with perfect scores this week - yeah Troop!

Here's a broader view. His camp was Conestoga. Basicall there were a bunch of tents, a pavillion, a few random picnic tables, a fire pit, "bathrooms", and a hard 3 sided shelter where the adults stayed.

After visiting camp, we headed for the pool where they had games planned. Only scouts participated, but Andrew was entered in 3 events and came in 3rd in "Hot Shot". He had to carry a match across the pool, then light it. He did well in the 50 yard swim too, especially since most of the kids were older. The hike to the pool was quite long and rough. No easy paths out there.

Here is my handsome guy ready for the nightly marching event (sorry, I don't remember what it's called). It was a nice ceremony where they take down the flag, but tonight, they also inducted new members into OA (Order of the Arrow).

The troop won the marching trophy last night for the first time in 10 years!!!! They were quite proud. Then, then won it again while we were there. 2 nights in a row. They were on fire.

Here are the Troop 100 campers this year.

Andrew watching the ceremony. The indian is part of the induction ceremony of the new OA members. Indians are a large part of all ceremonies at camp.

Here is a picture of them marching, when they won the award. Guess the judges weren't watching as Billy was off :-)

Here is Andrew's patrol flag. His troop is broken into 2 patrols. Shockwave and Ace. They even have patrol shirts that one of the mothers made. Nice group of boys in his patrol too.

Andrew earned 4 merit badges this week. Swimming, Shotgun, Weather and Papermaking (or something like that). He also did the polar bear swim every day so he will get a patch for that. He also climbed the 40 ft. rock wall (the hardest section). His favorite was the shotgun. Well, he should be home soon, time to wash the smelly, wet, gross laundry from the week.