Our Beautifully Ordinary Life

Since my brother and his family hadn’t been to visit before they had a couple of requests. One was to see the jets that J works with and the other was to go to the beach to collect some shells. Too easy.

J worked it out that he was able to take the kids right up to one of his planes in the hanger. They were pretty stoked about this. Me? My fascination with super fast jets wore off about 12 years ago so I got potty duty since Ava, as usual, must visit every single bathroom in every new place we go. Besides, I wasn’t about to let her out of my control since we were around very, very expensive (and sharp – just ask J about the staples he had in his head) fighters.

We took a brief pit stop for everyone to visit the static displays before we headed for the beach…

which was pretty exciting for the kids since it was their first trip ever to any beach. And since the main goal was shell collecting we opted to take them to one of the nature preserves on the Chesapeake Bay. Shells are aplenty there whereas not so much at the bigger, more popular (read: well-known) beaches.

Despite the wind, the veryveryvery cold wind, it was an amazingly successful trip. Many shells were collected, along with about a million sponges and much seaweed that were washed ashore during the horrific Nor’easter. I was incredibly shocked, however, at how much erosion damage there was to the beach from the storm. At least 1/3 of the beach was gone for a good 1/2 mile down.

An upside to the strong tides was that there were lots more shells than usual, many of them more unusual than what’s normally found there. We also discovered washed-up crab pots, boots, plenty of driftwood, and tidal pools galore.

So the crab pot. It lent itself nicely as a prop for a few photos. Too bad the sky was darkening – it would have been lovely with puffy, white clouds.

We talked Daddy into a picture or two.

Except the sand in the face from the wind kicking up wasn’t so much fun.

Ava was Terribly Worried. So much so that she fretted over him like a little mother hen until she finally made him laugh. Then she knew all was well.

We had to nearly dynamite her to get up and move from this spot. She was totally fine with sitting there and playing with her shells indefinitely so we bribed her to move along.

And what did we bribe her with? A stick, people. We bribed her with a stick. Which was, apparently, the BEST TOY EVER.

After a few quick games of chase with her cousin…

we headed back.

The dark clouds continued to roll in and the weather was clearly deteriorating so we made a break for it as soon as the first raindrops started to fall. We bundled Ava up like a ninja…

and hiked back out…

only to discover it was a false alarm on the rain. Timely, though. We were well past lunch and Ava was reaching meltdown point. No lunch and no nap does not a happy Ava make.

I did have a kid moment for myself, though. Since there were lots and lots of big puddles I decided to jump right in the middle of one – not realizing it was about 5 inches deep until I found that I’d soaked myself to the knee. Ah well, it cracked the kids up and I had a blast so I hit every single one I could find all the way out. I was muddy, drenched, and freezing but it was Fun. Adults really should do stuff like that more often.

We finished up with a late lunch at McDon.ald’s where I discovered a new appreciation of being a parent to only one instead of three. Logistically, it’s just easier when you outnumber the kids, not to mention waaayyyyyyy cheaper.

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