Cape May

Last week was our vacation week in Cape May, NJ.  Dave’s parents rent a gorgeous house a block from the beach for all of us to share, and we had another fabulous time, thanks to them.

Last summer I told you all about Cape May’s beautiful houses, about some beach traditions we have, and about our trip to the boardwalk.  So I won’t be repeating myself there.  This year we also went to the Cape May Zoo, which was not only free, but actually a very nice zoo, with giraffes, monkeys, turtles (which were my favorite), and capybara (which were Maddie’s favorite since they reminded her of Herbie, who we missed so much…thanks Jodi for taking good care of him!  Mwah!), and plenty more hot and bored looking animals.  Unfortunately, my batteries died seconds after I turned on my camera so you are spared will unfortunately not get to see a single picture of a turtle or capybara.

On the way home from the zoo, we stopped at an Acme and bought Ben’s cookie birthday cake, and Jack sat on it the second I placed it in the car.  No pics of that though either (camera batteries, dangit!) but the cookie was only a little smooshed and Jack got the piece with the butt indentation on it so it all worked out just fine in the end.  (Ha!  In the END!)

Other than that, I’ve mostly got lots and lots of beach pictures.  This might be a good time to go use the bathroom or get yourself a snack as there are quite a few and I know you won’t be able to break yourself away once you get started.  Enjoy!

Have I ever mentioned that Dave’s brother Allan is a priest?  We always start our week off with our own personal mass, including hymns and a very personalized homily (warning…we’ve learned to listen closely to the scripture readings….Allan asks questions and expects answers!) and a 5 minute Sign of Peace time as we make our way around the room to greet everyone.

We also celebrated Tyler’s 16th birthday on our second day at the beach! Here he is coming down in the morning to a big “Surprise!” from everyone:

Look! A seagull flew by as I took this picture!:

And….can you believe…I think I’ve got my Christmas card picture in AUGUST!

This has happened only once before, people. Join me in a happy dance!  Woot woot!

On Thursday I’ll have one more BeachPost:  Instagram at the Beach.

Happy Birthday

…to my favorite eleven year old in the world.

                                                        Happy Birthday, Benjamin David Wolfe!

We are at the beach, as we always are on his birthday.  Here’s what he’s been up to so far this week:

Tonight he opens presents and we’ll sing Happy Birthday to him over a giant chocolate chip cookie cake (his choice), after enjoying a dinner of steak and sticky rice (also his choice). 

He can barely wait until present time.  He loves presents more than any of the other kids, I think.

I love that smart, stubborn, soft-hearted fella more than words can say.  Happy Birthday to my Honey B.

 

 

 

It’s a Mystery

Do you have any mysteries at your house?  I’m not talking Scooby-Doo type mysteries, as I feel I can safely assume that none of you have been wandering around mine shafts or abandoned amusement parks searching for a dognapper or Old Man Jenkins and his crazed puppet burglars, and my sympathies if you are, and, may I add, I’d love to read your blog.

No, I’m talking about mysteries like…

1.  Who leaves the gigantic toothpaste globs on the sink in the kids’  bathroom?  Also, who spits out their toothpaste spit and then doesn’t rinse it down?  Everyone denies doing both of these things and points fingers, then strangely enough, when I station myself in the bathroom at toothbrushing time, the globs/unrinsed spit stains are miraculously absent!  That too is a mystery.  Where do they go?  Why are they only present went I am not?

2.  Who spread Legos all over the basement floor?  Although three children play Legos down there, all three claim that their own Legos start in the Lego bin and end in a project and that the other two must have spread their Legos out.

3.  Why are Austin & Ally and Lab Rats even allowed to be television shows and why do my children like  them?  To be honest, I actually like Good Luck, Charlie and Victorious, but these are a complete mystery to me.

4.  Where has all the tape gone?

5.  Why can’t anyone else hear the squeaking of the guinea pig?  Are his squeaks ultrasonic and my ears the only ones physically capable of receiving his panicked call for celery?

6.  How can people pass their own possessions put lovingly at the bottom of the steps by me for them to take upstairs umpteen gazillion times without a second glance?  How does it seriously never occur to anyone to pick up that book/hat/pile of cars and return it to their rooms?

7. Why do they all fight over my last sip of Diet Coke?  Yuck.  Warm, unfizzy, and yet, apparently the Nectar of the Gods to be fought over at all costs.

8.  And finally, why does it always look like this in front of the shoe drawers?

                                               Why, I ask you…WHYYYYY?!

Instagram July

Do you want to know what a dingbat I am?  Of course you do.  I’ve been on Instagram since May a year ago and I only realized that it was a social network about 3 months ago when someone (Pam A. , I’m looking at you) “liked” my photo.  I thought, “How the heck did she see my photo?  And then I realized that because I had hooked up with Facebook for photo sharing there, any of my FB friends could “follow” me and also I could “follow” them back.  Once I realized this, I Followed a small number of FB friends and I love checking into the News Feed daily to see what people are up to (through photographs only… no status updates). 

And then, imagine my excitement when a few weeks ago I realized you could search for celebrities and Follow them too!  I am now Following Melissa Gilbert (my favorite), Oprah, Barack Obama (which is mostly campaign stuff, not pics of Michelle and the kids hanging out roasting s’mores, boo), Ashton Kutcher, Zach Galifianakis, and Hoda Kotb.  I’m sure there are celebrity fakes out there, but the ones I found are definitely the person.

I really love Instagram!  Won’t you get on it too so I can Follow you too, please?  If you want to look me up, my username is Bethpix.   So…

I guess I should start with July 4th.  Here are some pics from ours:

Please note:  I did not make those layered jello squares, this person did, and they were awesome. 

Moving on.  We found a bargain the last day of our church’s flea market!

                                        Also a mini guinea pig cage and cute plate!

The bike is for Jack who had outgrown his old bike by a lot.  He was so excited!  And the best part is the bike has pegs, so whenever we see him riding we can quote Napolean!

                                           “You got shocks…pegs… lucky!”                                                                    “Whoa, you got like three feet of air that time!”

July was a really, super dry month wasn’t it?  Maddie took this picture of our neighbor cows and they are surrounded by brown, dried out landscape.  I love the Queen Anne’s Lace in the photo.  A few days after the cow pic, Jack brought me a bunch of Queen Anne’s Lace he had picked, so I put it in a vase with pink food coloring in it to turn them pink.  Unfortunately, they turned kind of brownish pink and then dropped a whole bunch of dead crap all over my table, so boo to you Queen Anne’s Lace.

I’m not kidding you, school supplies were in Wal-Mart in early July.  Boo to Wal-Mart, from Ben.  (And thanks for giving me hope, Walmart!  Kisses!)

                                         This is not a happy customer, people.

Dave and I went to a wedding without the kids!  My cousin Marjorie married a very nice guy, Shawn.  The wedding was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with my bratty brother Dave and the lovely Jamae at the reception.

                        I had better shoes and they were totally cute but new and gave me blisters about 5 min. after I put them on.  Boo dumb, cute shoes.

The reception was within walking distance from our hotel, and so we walked home quite happily (if you get my drift) and as we got into our hotel we heard the sound of music.  No.  Not just music. Karaoke, baby!  So we crashed a 40th birthday party with the hopes of getting in on some good Karaoke action.  Unfortunately, a slow song came on.  Fortunately, we were in the mood to slow dance!  Unfortunately, that song was “I’m Proud to Be an American”, which is true, we are proud to be Americans, but it wasn’t the best slow dancing music ever.  So we said goodbye to our new friends and reluctantly left.

We had a super time, Nuner!  Thanks for the hospitality and goodie bags and we’ll see you this fall at Uncle Rico and Aunt Barb’s anniversary party!

We Went to Indian Echo Caverns and saw a salamader!

Bible School happened in July.  Maddie helped with the pre-k class and loved it.  Jack said Bible School was the second best thing he did all summer (second to Tiger Scout Camp) and Ben only went because I made him.   Here is Ben at the Last Day Show refusing to do the hand motions.

I know it’s a terrible picture but I want this documented so when he has children and they are sometimes grumpy little buggers I can pull this up and say, “Your turn, mister” or maybe “God remembers how you didn’t sing His special songs so He gave you naughty children” or perhaps just, “HAhahaha!!”

We went out to breakfast with good friends.  The kids were very well behaved, but I felt for our waitress because the order taking was a little crazy (“Can I have waffles?  No make that pancakes, but can I have jelly not syrup and can I have hot chocolate with no whipped cream?  Oh, instead, could I have orange juice?  And can I have bacon?  No… sausage.  Ummm, can I make it bacon? ”  Repeat 8 times.)

We saw a kitten in the clouds! Do you see him lying on his back like he’s playing with a ball of yarn?

We went to a lot of swim meets!  Maddie made All-Stars and then Mid-Caps so that extended our swim season by two weeks, but luckily swim meets are pretty fun.  Well.  They’re fun if you like waiting for a four hour stretch for your daughter to swim three 1 minute races and the rest of the time you try to keep your seven year old entertained and stay cool and use port-a-potties and slap bugs away.  Which I totally do!

              Maddie is the one smack dab in the middle in the black suit.

Lots of plain old swimming for fun has been happening too.

                                   Or maybe I should say “lots of fancy jumping” has been happening.

Jack found this cornstalk in the “alley” (as he calls it) between our fence and our neighbor’s fence.  He has staked his claim on it as ours because he measured (with a ruler, seriously!) and the corn stalk is closer to our fence than theirs.   You can see he has fenced it in and checks on it every few days, anxious that the neighbors will discover it and counter–claim.

                      So far we’ve been lucky.  But Jack is prepared to go to court if necessary. 

In related news, Farmer Smith’s corn is in his stand and it is particularly sweet and delicious this year!

Goodbye July, and a great big Welcome to August from Big D!