The Raz Report: No Day at the Beach

Contrary to the way it looks in these pictures, we only went to Grandma Connie's house for one week. I told the girls that they could bring some toys and stuffed animals as long as it fit into their backpacks...

And this is what we ended up with. This is in ADDITION to the giant suitcase that held their clothes and sundries. Go ahead and ask me how many of these toys got played with. Go ahead. I can tell you because it's easy to remember: None. They played with the stuffed animals at Grandma's house. But that's okay because the did take everything OUT of these backpacks, hide them all over Grandma's house and then whine: WHERE IS MY ............ fill in the blank ......... when we were getting ready to leave. Good time. :) Seriously, the girls really enjoyed packing for their trip to the shore.

And, as you can tell from the previous post (which you should read, in case you missed it) we did spend some time at the beach. But the great thing about Grandma Connie's house is that if you don't like the beach all the time (like I don't) there are many, many other things to do. For instance, you can paint the ceiling and trim on the large (beautiful) porch....

Or you can kill weeds in the crevices by the road (disclaimer: Grandma Connie did not request this service, Rob thought of it all on his own because, well, he's kind of a crazy person) ...

You can drink Irish Coffee made special for everyone during a game of Rummy 500. Let me just say that I did NOT drink the freshly made and alcohol-laden Irish Coffee and I still lost Rummy 500 miserably. The original Rasmussen children consider Rummy 500 a full contact sport (along with the other family favorite Monopoly) and I just couldn't keep up. I didn't mind losing to them (twice) too much, but it did sting a little when Lizzie beat me at Go Fish the next day. The tradition continues...

There's always time for relaxing in the gorgeous Cape May County Park, too. Here's Rob and his mom (not his sister although it looks like it) under a tree in the park:

We also went to one of Rob's old haunts, Urie's Fish Fry. Rob worked there for something like 17 years when he was in high school and college:

Hannah ordered fried shrimp and ate every last one of them. Lizzie had the chicken fingers and fries and ate most of MY noodles alfredo:

Hannah LOOOOOOVES shrimp.

The girls in their Zoo Camp attire, with Rob:

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM, especially Rob and Uncle Dude who went for the extra large sundae's:

We had a great picnic in the park following Zoo Camp one day. Food was from Hugits where Rob and I spent many a Saturday back in the day:

Hannah, Aunt Linda and Lizzie at the ice cream place:

We found lots of things to do indoors, too. Hannah watched DVDs with Trevor the dog.

And both girls enjoyed their trip to the library with Grandma. My kids looooooove the library!

There's always some dancing at Grandma Connie's too. Aunt Linda is teaching Lizzie to salsa dance. You can see how hard she working her out by the sweat on Lizzie's back (actually her hair was still wet from the beach, so don't call the authorities or anything):

Here's Hannah's self-portrait. In it, she depicts herself wearing the amount of lipstick that she's choose to wear if I let her, which I don't:

Lizzie's self-portrait which shows me that, even though she insists she wants to grow her bangs out, she really wishes she had NO bangs:

This is Lizzie's other piece of art. Pretty good, don't you think?

Oh yeah, there were more of those sports things, too. Uncle Dude went out and BOUGHT MY CHILDREN BASEBALL GLOVES. Seriously. Isn't there a law against that or something? Never mind that they look like they are having fun.

Okay, LOTS of fun. I'm happy to report that there was some catch-playing since we've been home (but I had nothing to do with it) but they are not sleeping with their new mitts as suggested by their uncle. So there.

More dancing. This time we were dancing to ABBA tunes in the kitchen...

Grandma can play "Fernando" on the accordion, but it now dawns on me that she got away with NOT performing for the week. We'll have to remedy that the next time we go visit. You'll see Hannah is holding a fan as she dances. Aunt Linda gave them the fans from Chinatown...