Summer 2012 family experience

We got back yesterday from a short trip to Kent Island, MD. Two nights in a hotel with small kids seems like a long trip though. Now that I'm sitting down to try to write about our trip, which I'm calling an experience rather than a vacation (vacation is restful afterall, right?), I'm realizing that I should have been at least jotting down things to remember because I have a hard time retaining all the memories and impressions I want to keep over a span of more than a day or so. Plus, heat and lack of sleep fries my memory. Many times over the course of our little trip, I thought "ahh! I have to remember that!" and now I'm drawing a total blank. 

The rough outline of our trip is that on Wednesday afternoon we left home and drove to Kent Island, which is across from Annapolis, MD. We stayed in the Hilton Garden Inn in the "narrows" of the island, which had a beautiful view of water and boats. Thursday we drove to Annapolis, walked around, baked to death, decided to try beating the heat at the beach and drove all the way to Rehoboth Beach, got all wet and sandy and still baked to death because it wasn't any cooler. We drove back to the hotel, contemplated heading back home without staying a second night, had dinner, realized it was too late to head back, checked out and headed home on Friday morning, with a stop in Annapolis for coffee and breakfast. 

These are some shots of the terrain immediately surrounding our hotel. 

 

I love the water and the docks. Having two small kids on the docks is terrifying, however. 

They drowned several times in my imagination. 

 

This restaurant and dock was right below our hotel

  

  

The evening of our arrival we dined at "The Narrows", which is a semi-casual but nice (expensive, just like all the restaurants on the water) restaurant. It is directly on the water and has lots of windows and a great view. We spent more time keeping our kids in line than looking at the view, I think. Violet consumed more french fries on this trip than she had previously ever seen in her life. She wouldn't nurse while we were on the road and the only thing we could get to eat were fries. 

Tim had an insanely tender filet, and I ate my first softshell crab. I had to ask the server whether I was supposed to eat the whole thing or not. Lol. Where I come from the crabs are all hard!

 

On Thursday morning we set out for Annapolis. Then we realized that the car lights had been on all night and our battery was dead. I kept the kids occupied and alive on the docks while Tim looked for help. The weird thing is that the night before he had backed the car into a spot, which is unusual for him, but it made it a LOT easier to get the car jumped.  

This was one of several setbacks we had in getting this "experience" going. Before we even left the house, on Tuesday night, Violet got her foot stuck between the wood floor and a piece of sheet metal that was exposed in the wall because of the moulding being off right now. I had to cut through her flesh just to get her sweet little foot out, and it looked BAD at first. Like hospital-worthy. She was in pain and pitiful and I was about to have a heart attack. Once we got it cleaned out and stopped the bleeding, her cut didn't look as bad as before, and with it tightly wrapped up in bandages, she insisted on jumping down and walking around. So we just followed a professional nurse friend's advice and doused the cut really well in peroxide. Then I made a little salve with coconut oil and lavender essential oil and wrapped her up. She is doing really well now. 

 

We strolled through the waterfront area of Annapolis in the morning. Starting at a coffee shop for some breakfast and coffee, we did as much exploring as we could before the heat totally sapped us of any will to keep going. 

 

This is my beer at Dogfish Head in Rehoboth Beach. Their flagship alehouse is there in the strip of shops leading up to the beach and boardwalk. We all shared a lunch sized (super yummy) fish and chips, and Tim and I enjoyed some beer. He had a limited summer ale that was Belgian style with serious lemongrass flavor to it. Really refreshing yet full flavored and delicious. And I had the palo santo marron, which you can actually get easily in stores, but I had never tried it before. SO GOOD. 

 

 We hunted down a parking spot near the beach and took the kids down to splash around. Violet immediately got pounded by one of those random strong waves that you don't see coming, but thankfully I was holding her hand tightly and she just got whipped around. It scared her though, and she insisted on clinging to my neck from there on. 

Clover got sucked down by a retreating wave and landed face first into the water and sand. I had to yank her up by the back of her bathing suit while I was holding Violet and the camera and my purse. Poor thing. She was totally freaked out and all sandy. 

 

Clover developed a healthy fear of the water after her fall so she clung to my leg while still enjoying the waves

 

This might seem like random information, but Violet is still a nursing babe. Normally she nurses several times a day and prefers to get most of her nutrition that way rather than being very interested in eating much solid food. Where this becomes relevant to our trip is that while we were away from home she pretty much refused to nurse most of the time, and just lived off of french fries except for when she finally settled down at around 10:30pm and nursed to sleep. So on the way home from Rehoboth beach we had to stop the car and basically force her to nurse because I felt like I was going to die. Lol.

Clover totally zonked the whole way back to our hotel.

 

This is the view directly from our hotel room deck. So beautiful. On the night we got there it was the 4th, and we were able to watch fireworks on the horizon from here. They were close enough to be visible but far enough that there was no noise to scare Clover, who was terrorized by the sound of fireworks last year.  After we were done watching from the deck, we went inside and watched the DC and NYC ones on the tv as the girls drifted off to sleep finally at probably 10:45 or so. Crazy schedule for kids who normally get shuffled off to bedtime at around 7 normally.

 

On Friday morning we were practically trapped in our parking space by a large truck that parked behind us. But Tim squeezed us out just barely and we set off for home. After a short time of the girls having fun together in the back seat, and Clover insisting that Violet "tell her a joke!!", Violet started screaming bloody murder about wanting "num nums" and wanting "daddy", and was generally writhing and acting insane like an overtired, underfed child would be expected to act. (We realized not that far into our trip that we were not on a vacation, and that we might not have many hotel stays in the near future. Lol.) The good thing about this time was that we were using up some hotel points that Tim had been keeping for a long time, so our room was free. 

We had some fun, made some memories, got out and did/saw new things, and came back with a new appreciation for the comfort of our own home. I just wish I had remembered all those funny little things that happened along the way. Because family life is pretty hilarious.