Catch Up, Part Four - Camping Day Two

This is how day 2 started, my two little ones curled up next to me in bed, love it! This is how we slept every night, Greg took one of the fold out beds and the kids and I slept on the bed. It would have been too squishy for all of us together (I think it's a full size, we make do on our queen size at home, but this would have just been a little too smushed!) and it was a good compromise for me! Ian has long been a "crawl into our bed in the middle of the night" kid, and even though I have many days where I wake up plastered to the wall teetering on my side (and he's the kind of child that sleeps UPSIDE DOWN on TOP of the covers, arrgh!), I know that in no time at all he won't be crawling in with us so I'm taking the cuddle time as long as I can. When Ana first came home, this wouldn't have been comforting to her at all, so this is new and wonderful for us that she seems to enjoy snuggling in with us when she is having a hard time sleeping. In fact, with this heat we've been having, we have AC in our bedroom and she doesn't (well until we hung a sheet between Ian and her room so the two rooms could stay relatively cool on these awful sticky nights!) so she was waking up a lot and just couldn't seem to get comfortable. We brought her in with us and she snuggled up next to me and drifted off quite content! When Ian came in later, Greg pulled her over a bit so Ian could slide in next to me and when she woke up, she crawled over to me, gave me the biggest grin and laid her head on my chest before climbing up and falling back to sleep on top of me. Can't imagine anything better than that! But, I digress....back to camping.

If you have never been to Salisbury Beach, there is a strip where there's an arcade (Joe's Playland), and several food vendors (beach pizza, yum!). Not to mention the best candy store ever! Joe's happens to be one of Ian's favorite places on this earth! He's been numerous times with not only us, but Greg's mum, and my parent's as well! Since we all drove in the RV and we didn't have an extra vehicle, Greg thought maybe we could just walk from the Reservation (where we were camping) down to the strip. I must admit I was a little skeptical as the road driving in seems to drag on forever! He thought that maybe we could just walk down the shore line letting Ian play along the way stopping when we needed to, so that's what we attempted. Now, beach sand is not one of my favorite walking surfaces, not to mention the whole pushing the loaded stroller through said beach sand. It was about mid-day and really hot and bright! We petered out pretty quickly making it probably only 1/3 of the way to our destination. We stopped just as Ana woke up from her nap so we decided to sit down and play for a bit. Ian again had a ball in the water becoming braver than I was comfortable with, he definitely got his father's love for ocean swimming! Ana still didn't like the water but had a great time playing (well, trying to eat, mostly!) the sand. We sat for a while before heading back to camp and taking a little rest, the heat sure does wipe you out!

Ian digging a hole as the waves continually filled it back in...Ahhh 6 year old determination!

Ana, resting comfortably as we trudged along the beach:

Look how she held her hands up high, she was not letting them touch that cold water!

But the sand was fascinating! This was undoubtedly moments before that handful went into her mouth!

And lastly, here's a picture of Ian looking pretty grumpy. Why is he grumpy you ask? Well, we decided to talk that walk after all. It was still very hot, and very sunny and we told Ian it would be a long walk but he decided that Joe's Playland was worth it! It took us about an hour to walk there and about 45 minutes to walk back due to the swarms of mosquitoes that joined us (that'll kick you into gear!). Ian had a grand time playing at the arcade, indulging in Tripoli's beach pizza and carefully picking out a treat from Willy's Candy Store. I was pretty proud of him to walk all the way with minimal complaining. We measured the distance on our way home and figured that we walked close to 6 miles that day (including our failed attempt), not bad for a six year old, never mind for the two out of shape grown-ups pushing the loaded down stroller! I'm really glad we did it, and even though he looks pretty ornery in the picture I'll bet he'd tell you he was glad too!



We concluded the night with more movie watching (Hercules!) while enjoying our Willy's goodies!