Way Back Weekly

(Edited!! I embedded the wrong video --it's the right one, now!)

Since Dad is just beginning his vacation in the Poconos for the seventh time, I thought this way back weekly should be a slideshow that I made of our very first vacation in the Poconos in 2006. Hannah and Lizzie were just about to turn 3 and Tommy had just turned 3. In retrospect--what the heck were Ann and I thinking???
I happened to find this video on  one true media when I was looking or a different video and it got me all sappy about that first vacation. The first year we went to the Poconos, Aunt Ann and  I and the kids spent one week in a townhome, and then Uncle T.A. and Dad (the girls' dad, not my dad!) joined us for the last week. My parents stayed nearby in a different condo (that had a much better pool!). It was during that vacation that I wrote the bulk of "The Verbal Behavior Approach."
The next summer my parents rented a house in Split Rock and we rented a condo in the place with the good pool. Aunt Ann and Uncle T.A. didn't spend the week that year as Brenna  had just been born, but they made the trip for a few days. That vacation was very rainy and cold so my parents were bored and bought a six-week timeshare at Split Rock (doesn't everyone?). So for the past four years (this will be the fifth) we've spent a week all together there, watching the turtle races, hunting for golf balls, eating at Piggys, Terra Cottage and Hog Heaven and sitting in folding camp chairs in the front yards of our condos talking and talking and talking. I am SO looking forward to it again this year!! So here's the slideshow of our first-ever trip:

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Way Back Weekly

I changed the name of this feature because I have enough trouble figuring out what day of the week it is, much less remembering to post a photo!
Also, I like the drama of you all wondering WHEN will she post the picture... :) Will it be on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a ... well you can figure it out from there. The answer is I DON'T KNOW!! Isn't that exciting?
So on to today's first ever Way Back Weekly.
I call this picture SIBLINGS. Why? Because it's of my beautiful mom, my always young-looking Aunt Brenda and my always dashing Uncle Al, who are siblings.
This photo was taken at my wedding, which means it was taken on Oct. 1, 1994 -- nearly 18 years ago. Which isn't that amazing, since in a week or so I'll be going to my younger sister's 30th anniversary party and then, if my memory serves me correctly Aunt Anonymous will celebrate 30 years with her spouse. If I ever get to have a 30th anniversary party it will be couple with a Yay I'm Still Alive party.

 Also, if you look really closely at the upper right of the photo you'll get a glimpse of the elusive Uncle Anonymous -- and he's even smiling. I have  no idea who took this picture, but it was someone at the wedding (but not me). If you look on the table I had throw-away cameras at every table. I ended up with something like 750 photos of slightly drunk people!
It was a great wedding though and I loved finding this photo of my mom and her brother and sister looking so happy!

Way Back Wednesday

Is it just me or does everyone in this picture look like they are pretending to not know me?
And aren't Hannah and Lizzie cute? I remember that about a week or so before we took this trip Hannah cut off her bangs (it was probably the third and not the last time that she did that) which you can sort of see in this photo. And of course we need a picture of Rob with map in hand getting ready to take over for the driver in case he got lost...
I found this picture and it made me laugh, so I decided to make it our way back wednesday even though I have many (MANY!) better pictures of our cruise to Bermuda (for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary), when the girls were 3. In this picture we are on a bus that was taking us to a zoo/aquarium, one of the few times that the girls wanted to leave the children's camp on the boat. They preferred dressing up as pirates and watching videos to hanging out with their boring parents.
The cruise remains one of my favorite vacations ever, since we won all of the trivia games we played and I didn't get seasick and I did win $60 in the ship casino. Oh, and it was nice hanging out with my family, too. ;)

Way Back Wednesday

Ah summertime ... this picture is of my paternal grandparent doing something that I have only done once or twice: wearing a bathing suit. Ha Ha.

Seriously though, my grandparents were fairly athletic. Here they are in  canoe probably getting ready to shoot rapids or something

I've also got pictures of them wearing jodphers and doing the whole horseback riding thing

Clearly this whole athletic, outdoors thing gene skipped me.

I have been in a canoe  few times, although I have usually wanted to sit in the middle and enjoy the ride while other people paddle! When we were dating Rob took me on a canoe trip. We were taken upstream and dumped off in our canoe and we floated downstream.

The water was only about two feet deep, however when we pulled over to a shore to eat our lunch, I distinguished myself by stepping out of the canoe and into the water only to sink up to my thigh in muck.

So ended my career as  canoeist...

My grandparents fared much better, I'm sure. And they sure do make a nice couple here, don't they?

Non Beach Beach Vacation

We're not really beach people. And by we, I mean me. And probably Rob, too. The girls are TOTAL beach people, but since they rely on us to get them to the beach they don't get to be beach people.
So, when we go to the beach to visit Grandma, we don't really spend that much time at the beach.
Which is all just a long-winded way to introduce these photos, which occurred during our vacation, but have little to do with the beach...

Okay, this probably LOOKS like a beach and it is called Sunset Beach, but we're not hereto swim, we're looking for Cape May Diamonds. We found a couple too (in the gift shop). Here Uncle Dude shows the girls what to look for (a Cape May Diamond is naturally polished quartz):

Grandma helped look for the Cape May Diamonds, too. Does anyone else see a jolly old elf in this picture (I swear that's not a mother-in-law joke!) Now we know where Santa vacations!:

 Again, we're at the beach but NOT swimming. This is Reed's Beach where we go every year to watch the sun set over the bay:

Zoo camp is still the girls' favorite part of this vacation. The Cape May County Zoo offers camp that runs in the morning, giving the girls something to do while their aunt and uncle (but unfortunately not their parents...) sleep in. This year the girls got a very up close look at the baby snow leopard cubs at the zoo.

We celebrated Uncle Dude's birthday with cheesecake and singing:

Aunt Linda brought the girls back these awesome and authentic flamenco dresses from Seville, Spain when she was there in June. To say the girls loved twirling in them is an understatement:

Aunt Linda and the girls in their outfits. Aunt Linda also did their makeup for them so she is a total rock star:

 Lizzie dancing like a crazy flamenco dancer:

Hannah in a (rare) quiet moment:

Lizzie getting chased by seagulls at Reeds Beach:

Sunset at Reed's Beach:

Moonrise on Reed's Beach:

 Lizzie playing checkers and eating an ice cream cone -- always the multi-tasker!

 Ice cream  parlor fun:

It wasn't all fun and games though, as Uncle Dude taught the girls to drum. (Big sigh.)

 Cash (who always gets to go on this vacation) was on duty guarding our dinner:

 Hannah with Catzilla, a neighborhood cat who loves people but NOT other cats:

 Trevor and Cash hoping that Grandma or Rob drops something while cooking dinner:

Unfortunately, the sun did eventually have to set on our vacation. A great time was had by all:

This is my "official" Reed's Beach sunset photo!

Beach Vacation

This is one of two posts about our glorious vacation at the shore. The weather was gorgeous (went from too cold for the beach to heatwave!), the company was grand and the behavior was ... well, let's just stick with the good stuff, okay?!

This is my new favorite picture of Hannah and Liz. This was on our first day at the shore. We always go to the beach after dinner and the girls always seem to go in with their clothes on. So I took some photos of them jumping for joy that vacation had  begun:

We actually remembered our beach umbrella this year. YAY! We always go to 101st Street in Stone Harbor , which is the same beach that Rob went to when he was a kid. This year Grandma, Uncle Dude and Aunt Linda didn't join us at the beach. :( But we had fun anyway because the water was warm and the waves were awesome AND there were no beach inspectors to force us to buy beach tags!

You'd think the digging in the sand thing would get old after nearly 10 years, but it's still a favorite. Unfortunately while we were patting ourselves on the back for remembering the umbrella we were hanging out heads in embarrassment that we didn't remember all our beach digging stuff. So we went to WalMart and Rob spent $2 for these lovely buckets.

This is Hannah's Sand Art:

The waves were great for boogie boarding -- probably because Debby was lurking somewhere in the ocean.  Trust me, you rarely get three waves in a row like this in Stone Harbor unless it is actually storming. So both girls took advantage:

Here they are riding a small wave into shore. One of Lizzie's friends from zoo camp taught her to body surf later in the week, but I didn't get any picture of that. She had so much fun doing it that she didn't get out of the water for the whole 2-plus hours we were at the beach:

There's a boogie board in there somewhere ... but I just liked Lizzie's crazy face:

As you can see, the waves were pretty big this year. Here's Rob saying Hello to Hannah and Goodbye to his sunglasses. :( I believe the sunglasses were the only casualty of the trip, so that was a very good (albeit expensive) thing:

Next up are our non-beach shore photos!

Way Back Wednesday

In honor of Way Back Wednesday falling on the 4th of July I am offering this picture of my very patriotic mom.
I don't know anything about this picture except that my dad wrote on the back that it's mom during a parade in Somers, NY.
My guess is that it was probably taken during the late 1990s  but that's just a guess - I do think it's a great picture though, whenever it was taken. (EDITED TO ADD -- Dad thinks this picture was taken in the early 1980s when Mom was on the Somers School Board because of some of the people she's marching with!)
When I think of mom, this is almost always how she looks in my memory -- smiling, waving a flag, enjoying herself!