The Raz Report: Non-Beach Babes

We do a lot each week we are at the shore and only a small portion of it has to do with the beach. It's a very exciting time getting ready for visiting Grandma and this year I decided that the girls were ready to help pack their own things. Hannah jumped in immediately and packed nine (NINE!!) bags. That was okay, but not ONE of the bags contained any CLOTHES. These were all the toys that she decided she couldn't live without for seven days. Lizzie, as you can see, wasn't as enthusiastic about packing her own stuff:

Cash joined us on this trip and I have to say that I was NOT looking forward to that. But it turned out that he was the best traveler of the three "kids" in the back seat:

Here's Rob, the girls and grandma Connie at the 101st Street Pavilion. Connie's spending the summer in New York City, but took a break to host us at her house:

Rob and I pitched in the cooking. Here he made his world famous Scampi, which was loved by everyone (except me, but I don't like shrimp and made my own seared swordfish). As usual Hannah helped prepare the scampi:

This is Lizzie and a friend at Reed's Beach. Reed's Beach is well known for the horseshoe crabs that crawl up to the shore to lay eggs and then get flipped over on their backs by the incoming or outgoing tide, and then get eaten by the seagulls. When I lived here I'd go there often and toss the crabs back into the ocean before they died. Lizzie wanted to do the same thing, but first, she is afraid of horseshoe crabs and second, they were all dead already:

Hannah took a different tack and just chased the seagulls away over and over again. And over and over again, again:

A new wrinkle in our shore trip was biking. We brought all of our bikes down to the shore and rode them every day. And by WE I mean everyone EXCEPT ME. I tried one, pedalled twice, fell off (actually it was more of a dive off) and gave my bike to Grandma Connie to ride:

Look at them go:

One of the highlights of the week is the big fish barbecue. We grill several different types of fish as well as dogs and burgers and serve it up with salads. It was delicious this year as always. And we enjoyed it with some family friends, Gail and Emma Jean

We also took some time (three times, actually) to celebrate Uncle Dude's birthday. Here he is getting some help blowing out the candles on some cheesecake:

Here's some of the grilling team for the evening. I was inside manning the fry pan for some more seared salmon and sword. Hannah things grilling is FUN, but about 35 seconds after this picture was taken she was dancing around the backyard and stuck her hand on the grill. Which meant I had to take a quick ride down to the CVS to get some burn cream. She was fine as soon as I got back with the burn cream and some candy:

Here's the other integral part of the grill team: Uncle Dude -- who I'm pretty sure is wearing the Giants shirt to appease the Garritys who may read this:

We brought a lot of memories home with us, but not much sand. Rob cleaned out the car and took it over to vacuum it so that it would not enter Pennsylvania with us. However I can tell you that quite a bit made it into our suitcases, shoes, shovels and pails. But it was a nice try:

Rob and I love to look at property that we can't (yet) afford. Here he is standing on the balcony of some condo in Diamond Beach that is being auctioned off for about $1million. Nice beach views. But, you know, I don't really like the beach:

It turns out that the dogs really did get along and Cash will be welcomed back on subsequent visits. He woke us up at 6 a.m. the first morning, but that was probably due to the excitement of zoo camp. Once he found out he wasn't going, he slept in until 8 like the rest of us (wanted to):