Vacation Day 3 – Independence Day!

Posted By on July 10, 2016

In the morning, Mark talked Sam into going for a bike ride down the Promenade. It’s a long ride, but definitely doable. I guess it was too much for her little legs to handle. They got back, and this is what happened to Sam at the top of the stairs!

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After all her exercise, Sam was ready to hit the beach. I love her new sunglasses!

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Sam didn’t know exactly what she felt like doing, so we played tic-tac-toe in the sand. To mix it up a bit, I started making small sandcastles instead of x’s or o’s. Sam and I each had a shape. She loved that!

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Sam also played hopscotch, although, she was quick to criticize the hopscotch I drew. I accidentally made one row with three squares across instead of two. Boy, did I hear about that a million times! “Mommy, why did you draw three boxes?” No sooner did we get over the trauma of my mistake, when Maddox showed up and started asking me, “Aunt Pam, why are there three boxes across?” Arrrgghhhh!!! These darn kids! Perfectionists!

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Sam and her buddy, Ryder. She kept him amused the whole time. That kid will be a good babysitter some day.

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Sam didn’t feel much like building a sand castle, strangely, but she and Mark did make a giant pyramid. She liked that, especially the part where she smashed it. It was a weird beach year. I guess it is a good thing, but there were so few shells on the beach, there was literally almost nothing to collect. A clean beach is nice, but it was almost….too clean? No seashells? It was odd, and it took away one of Sam’s favorite activities.

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That night, we went for ice cream again. Krista got a salted caramel in a cone, and got a soft serve in a cup for Ryder. Well…Ryder didn’t exactly want his cup. We all cracked up when Ryder wound up eating every single bit of Krista’s ice cream cone. I think she got two licks. Sam was happy – she got to eat Ryder’s ice cream. Krista got nothing. Ah, the fate of a mom!

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We were all really excited about seeing the fireworks, but the weather forecast was not too promising. Rain, rain, rain on the way. We could only hope for the best. So, after ice cream, before going in, we stopped to take a few pictures in the back yard. There was a nice bench and we did get a few nice pictures.

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And then there’s these crazy pictures. We noticed from our deck that the people next door must have an unusual sense of humor. They had some…interesting things in their backyard. So…we snuck over the fence. Well, Mark and Sam did. I stayed on the other side. I already had my one breaking and entering shore event a few years ago. What? I never mentioned that on this blog? How we got locked out on our deck on the third floor and I had to leap over the fence that divided the property from the one next door, go through the sliding door, race through the neighbor’s house, down two flights of stairs, out the door and into our own house (which was thankfully unlocked) and hope that no one in the neighbor’s house saw me? Oh…I neglected to mention that? Probably. Um…no. That never happened…

Anyway, you KNOW Sam loved this! He was just sitting at the patio table.

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And, she loved this! Who doesn’t love a skeleton dog?

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It turned out that it did rain like crazy that night and it appeared fireworks would be cancelled, then at the last minute, they set them off anyway. Seems stupid being that there was a raindate for the next night, but whatever. It was still raining, but not pouring. We all slogged our way down to the Promendade and watched fireworks in the rain. Not exactly the fun filled evening of sitting on the beach watching, but still. It is better than nothing. Sam did feel a bit sad because it wasn’t the same. But I think she enjoyed the craziness of hanging out in the rain. There’s always next year!

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