A trip to the zoo....gone wet...

My good friends Jeanne and Mena, from college, were taking a trip in to Chicago to visit the zoo with their families. Of course, we couldn't pass up this opportunity to visit with some old friends that were going to be in the "neighborhood" and enjoy the afternoon at the zoo.

We had beautiful blue sky this morning and it was a hot day. My car was registering 90 degrees on the way to the zoo, but there was not a cloud in the sky. My only concern about the weather was that it usually feels about 15 degrees warmer at the zoo. I was afraid that the kids might not last too long with the heat.

We all met at Burger King for a quick lunch before heading into the zoo. Cathy had to work this afternoon, but was able to meet us for lunch too. So for a little while, the old suitemates from 3rd St. Joe's were all together again....well, all together again along with our 10 kids and even one husband came. I guess we were a good match for suitemates in college. We are all still friends and have similar tastes in names. Of all of our kids, we have 2 Bens, 2 Drews, 2 Wills, 1 Jack, 1 Mia, 1 Kaleen and 1 Charlie.

The zoo visit started out normal enough. A zoo lady taught us all about frogs and even with the hot weather, a couple of bears and a tiger were out.

We made our way over to the play area and even though we had noticed that some dark clouds were starting to come in, none of us were prepared for what happened next. It rained like crazy for an hour! It was insane...we were so wet. So what happens when you have 10 little kids at the zoo in the middle of a huge rainstorm. Well, there is not much that you can do...

After an hour of total downpours, we decided that it was time to end our trip to the zoo.

Jeanne and her kids came back to the house for some dinner and an old fashioned slumber party. What a *fun* day.

National Lasagna Day

Did you know yesterday was National Lasagna Day?

I had no idea, but the boys and I heard it on the radio yesterday. We like holidays...ummm...and lasagna...so, of course we had to celebrate National Lasagna Day!!

I have a great *recipe* for lasagna and as luck would have it, I even already had all of the ingredients. That never happens to me...I even had garlic bread!!!

Now, I don't want to leave you hanging and I will give you my secret recipe, but you have to promise not to laugh.




....ok, here it is....

You aren't laughing are you???

I'm serious...this stuff is GOOD! The first time we had it, we had been invited over to someone's house for dinner. (I won't name any names.) Anyway, it was around the holidays and the people hosting us ended up being very busy the day we were coming to visit. They picked up one of these at the last minute and served it. We all LOVED the lasagna...even the boys were asking for 2nds and that never happens! We didn't even know that it wasn't homemade until after we finished the meal. We enjoyed it so much that I have been buying them ever since.

So, you can go ahead and laugh, but I also figured out how to work the "delay start" on my oven yesterday so, while you were all slaving away in the kitchen making your lasagnas yesterday, the boys and I spent a couple of hours as the pool and came home to a great smelling house and an excellent dinner.

Happy Lasagna Day!!

The Irish are a wise group of people...

This is an email from Carl that I got a couple of days ago.

'We, in Ireland, can't figure out why people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States .

On one side, you have a pants wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer who cant keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer who goes to the wrong church who is married to yet another lawyer who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run.

Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate Mc terminology married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship.

What in heaven's name are you lads thinking over there in the colonies?'

Fired!!!

Spencer is a wonderful and very helpful husband and daddy. Getting ready to go to the beach every morning with 4 little kids takes a lot of work. Awwww...right?!?! I'm not complaining, I'm just telling the facts.

Anyway, Spencer pretty much took over the job of covering the boys with suntan lotion everyday before we went to the beach. I loved that he did that. It is a big job and definitely not one of my favorite jobs!!

After spending our last afternoon on the beach, Spencer and I were talking about how impressive it is that we made it through another beach vacation without any of our really fair skined kids getting a sunburn.

Since Spencer did the majority of the work, in this department, he got a big 'pat on the back' from me and he couldn't help but 'pat his own back' too.

Well, that night I started to pack up and this is what I found in the suntan lotion bag.

Ummmm....Honey.......why are there EIGHT bottles of OPENED suntan lotion?!?!

Apparently, my wonderful, helpful husband does not like using bottles of suntan lotion that are almost gone. Why????...I have no idea!!! It is not like I was asking him to scrape the bottom of the bottle to get the last remaining drops out. As you can see in the picture, I bought the expensive spray stuff. There is no extra work when it is almost gone. When it stops spraying, you throw it out and open a new one!!!


I asked him how many empty bottles of suntan lotion he threw away this week. After reminding me what a good job he did by not sunburning any of our kids, he admitted that he had not finished and disposed of a single bottle of suntan lotion this week. See the yellow bottle in the picture???...that bottle was almost gone when we left Chicago!!...it is still almost gone!!

So, we brought all eight, almost empty, bottles of suntan lotion back home again. I guess next year, Spencer will be on 'pack the lunches' for the beach duty.

;)

Home in Ocean City...

Here are some pictures of our beach house. Well, it is not really OUR beach house, but it was "home" to us for 7 days.

I almost forgot to mention, we *just* had the 1st floor. It was a great "beach house", not a "beach mansion".

The Totals are In...

We travelled 1,855 miles,

spent 32 hours and 38 minutes in the car,

spent $398 on gas,

and now we are home again...

I think it was worth it.

I ate 60-somethin' clams tonight...

...and a whole bunch of king crab legs that were as big as your arm.

Tonight was our last night in Ocean City. That is very sad, but we had an awesome night for the Grand Finale.

Last year, David and Jeannine, Craig and Nancee and Colette invited us over for "Crabfest". We didn't know quite what that would entail, but I love crab so, we couldn't pass it up. Also, the company is excellent. ;)

OMG, it was soooo good! It was the best crab and clams that I have ever had it my whole life and they ordered so much food that you could seriously eat as much as you wanted. I have been dreaming about this dinner since last year. It was unbelievable!

Tonight was Crab Fest II. I have really looking forward to this all week....well, all year. It was awesome once again. Jeannine ordered 300 clams for 9 adults! And, I have no idea how many snow crabs and king crab legs, but we all ate like piggies and they kept bringing it out. Oh, it was so good! I can't wait until next year...hint, hint!! ;)

It was really a fabulous evening. This family is so special to us and we love them all so much. Even if there was no crab or clams, it still would have been a fabulous evening visiting with some very special people. Thank you and we can't wait to see you again.

Oh yeah, the kids were there too. ;)

It starts with a wiggle.....

.....and the next thing you know, they are all grown up.

LOL!! Just kidding. But, we do have our first wigglie tooth. Ben discovered his bottom, right tooth was a bit loose at lunch today.

The Brothers were impressed!

The waitress saw me taking pictures and offered to take a family picture.

Happy Birthday Everyone!!!

Part of what makes our trip to OC so fun is that a lot of friends come down and vacation the same week. So, in addition to good times at the beach and on the boards, we are also able to visit with a lot of fun people that we don't see very often.

Most of the friends that are down here are Spencer's friends from high school, and their families. All of these "friends" are turning, or have turned 40 this year. Not that we haven't been celebrating Spencer's 40th birthday for long enough (since FEBRUARY!!), there was another 40th birthday party last night for the whole group of them.

The Old Fogies

The Next Generation

Just Another Day on the Beach...

What a life!!!

Jack, Craig, Charlie C., Charlie W., Drew, Ben

Ventnor, NJ

Uncle David builds the coolest stuff in the sand!!!

Vacation Time Out...

To bring you these great pictures of Liam (my Godson :) ). I took these right before we left on vacation. I just found them on my camera and HAD to post them!!!

Do you think this kid LOVES his bottle!!! Too funny! Yup, he was the HUGE 6 pound triplet at birth.

Ok, I couldn't resist, here is a picture of Aidan and Connor too. They were equally as cute, of course.

Aidan

Connor

The Best Ice Cream EVER!!!

Yesterday, Jack told me that George's has the BEST ice cream that he has ever had. For the first time, he decided to branch off of his regular choice of chocolate and got a little daring with Cookies n Cream. Apparently, he really, really, REALLY likes Cookies n Cream....he talked about it all day long! Today, he chose chocolate marshmellow and tomorrow he plans on trying "Muddy Sneakers".

I guess Jack's enthusiasm about his new ice cream choice was enough to convince Ben to switch from his usual vanilla to strawberry shortcake and Drew deviated from chocoate to black rasberry. Thankfully, everyone seemed happy with their choices.

Isn't life at the beach great, where the biggest decision of the day is what ice cream flavor to choose!

Rest Stops

At one rest stop, I was looking at a machine that contained a bunch of "prizes". You move the little arm and try to end up with a prize. Here is a picture of one of the prizes that I thought was quite interesting. It was facing backwards so, I never did see what it was....I can't imaine and I'm not sure that I would want to win it.

Are we almost there???? Mmmmmm...candy.

Packed up and Ready to go...

This was our van as we were pullingout of our driveway last Wednesday afternoon. Did anyone see us on I-80 going west???

We stopped for a pitstop at the Crayola Factory in Pennsylvania and tried to park in the parking garage. We totally forgot that the luggage carrier on top of the car. Lets just say that we are very lucky that the luggage carrier is still in one piece....major oops!! I am a horrible blogger that I did not get pictures of that, but I was too worried that we were going to be unloading the car in the middle of a parking garage at the Crayola Factory.

On the good side, the boys really liked the Crayola Factory.