Becky's Blog: Week 2: The Weavers Do Brigantine

The second week of our beach vacation is...slower. Yep, that's the best way to describe it. Our kids are the first up, the first to the beach, the first to be done at the beach, the first to be hungry, the first to turn into horrible over-tired child monsters, the first to go to bed. As the week progresses, we find ourselves slowing down just a bit and adjusting to the Weaver Speed of Life. It just takes a while to settle in after having been with the Joneses (mainly my hyper warp speed - and extremely efficient - father) for the week before. :-) In Bethany, we were ALL on the beach by 8:45 or so. In Brigantine, the four of us were frequently the first ones there around 10-ish. And we were never all there at the same time. Seriously! We never got to see our littlest niece, Lily, on the beach at all!

The beach itself just gets more and more fun as the kids get older. Here, the four older cousins are digging for buried treasure. Apparently, Corey spun a tale (as she is renowned for doing...:-) about a pirate book that she had read in Kindergarten. The others bought it hook, line, and sinker, and away they went! This was a recurrent theme for the week...LOTS of digging for treasure!

The beach house time was dominated by something completely different than digging...the Wii! This was our first year in this house, and we were lucky enough to carve out a niche in the living space for constant Wii-playing by young and old, alike. Here's Jim helping Louden and Ben to get something set up...

And for every minute that the boys played Wii, the girls played Polly Pockets. Oh, and the story lines they would weave!!!!! Nothing can bring a 6 3/4 yr old girl and a 3 1/2 yr old girl together quite like little dolls with 1500 rubbery costume changes... And when they needed a break? Corey would simply take Ellie to a quiet corner of the house to teach her football cheers. And let me tell ya, Ellie still has the moves! Have you ever seen a 3 1/2 yr doing cheerleading moves?!? 'Tis a scary thing!

My Loves putting up with my posing yet again...

I'm sure every Weaver/Smith will recognize these toes! What do you think? Could I sell it as a postcard? I'll split the profits with you, Aunt Dottie! :-)

Ellie's version of boogie boarding is having someone pull her around in the surf. Now that's a strenuous job!

Ben's FAVORITE activity from this year's beach time...boogie boarding with his cousins! He and Corey, especially, are now brave enough to go out rather far. They get tossed all around out there, and thus require one on one supervision most of the time. Ben would get rolled, go under, and pop up with a shocked look on his face. He'd say something like "I'm good!" or "That doesn't count!" Then he'd wipe his face and keep going. The only thing that stopped him was blood, and even that would only keep him down for a few moments!

Growing up in MD, one of my favorite beach time activities was digging for sand crabs. My sister and I could find copious amounts of them easily. We would put a dozen or more in a bucket of sand and water, play with them, watch them swim around, etc. Now, some twenty (or more) years later, they seem much harder to come by...at least 3o minutes north in Delaware. I don't know if it depends on specific location or what. Anyway, after 12+ years of coming to Brigantine, Ben and Jim actually found the first sand crab I've ever seen there! And here's how momentous this was. All of the adults came rushing over to see it, since aside from Jim and me, none of them has ever seen one before! Ben was quite proud! Guess the little buggers are even more scarce in New Jersey...

I made the grave mistake of offering to make Ellie into a mermaid early in the week. Betcha can't guess what I did every day for the rest of the week...