Vacation, part 1

I love summer vacation. I really do. Sure, Hannah and Liz can be a handful (more accurately an earful) but there's a lot to be said for having nothing to do and no deadlines to do it in.

Of course I do have Lizzie the Timekeeper who informs me at regular intervals that she is hungry, bored, mad at her sister, bored, hungry and bored. And then mad at her sister.

Hannah's a lot lower maintenance, although she's been working very hard on perfecting her whine this summer.

But seriously, it's been fun. So far. Probably because we've already spent a week away from home and our routine, which meant there wasn't nearly as much complaining or whining (and the girls were really good, too! -- ha, ha!)

Here are pictures from the first half of our week at the shore: We started our vacation with Father's Day. Here's Rob with his girls and his gifts. He got some great cards and a travel mug that has the girls' pictures on it (including the one at the top of this blog). The day was made more special for ME because my mother in law Connie cooked a delicious breakfast to celebrate the day. Daddy's a real big deal around here and the girls were worried we'd forget our gifts and cards, so they were extra thrilled that Grandma kicked in with a good breakfast, including bacon, too:

The Cape May County Park and Zoo is known best for the Zoo part, but the park part is really cool, too. We took some time on Sunday to hang out there because it was still too cool and rainy to really do anything else:Lizzie hanging around at the Zoo/Park:One of the highlights for the girls was Zoo Camp. Every morning of our vacation Rob and I dropped them off at the Zoo for three hours of crafts and education and seeing animals up close and personal. I'm pretty sure they saw lots of animals, but the one I heard the most about was the dead mouse that was food for one of the snakes. They loved, loved, loved zoo camp and Rob and I really loved stopping for coffee and then driving around the county:Rob on the jetty at Reed's Beach trying to get off of it before the tide came in:Sunset on Reed's beach:Proof that I, too, was on this vacation. Do you know anyone else who has sneakers like this?You can't have a vacation at the shore without ice cream! Here's Lizzie enjoying her banana ice cream:And the rest of the gang at the ice cream parlor: