It's a sand thing, you wouldn't understand

We've been at the beach (Ocean City, MD, area) since Wednesday. We were fortunate enough to go with a friend whose family has a house down there and we had a terrific time. We relaxed more over the past 4 days than we have in a year as Kevin was occupied with/by Daniel and Noel for most of the time. He had tons of fun with them.

We went to the beach (Assateague) on Thursday and although I absolutely love to swim in the ocean, I'd forfeit that from now on if it meant never getting another grain of sand in everything we own. I've never been big into the beach as I much prefer being in the woods in the mountains, but now that I have a child who doesn't swim, who won't go barefoot or even wear sandals without socks and who doesn't remember not to touch his mouth or eyes when his hands are sandy, I see that I'm even less of a beach person. But it was fun to go and maybe Kevin will someday not be so afraid of water that he'll have fun with the ocean.

Friday afternoon we went to the boardwalk between the raindrops and mostly ate and walked although we did stop in The Kite Loft, which was pretty cool. Kevin's greatest desire in that store was a lollipop. When told that he could choose either the lollipop or ice cream later he said, "Lollipop!" I clarified a few times asking, "Do you understand that when the rest of us stop for ice cream you can't have any?" and he replied, "No ice cream! Lollipop!" Ok, that was easy enough. Half of the lollipop still exists in all its sticky, watermelony glory on our kitchen counter.

Kirsten and I spent a lot of time at the kitchen table putting jigsaw puzzles together. Yesterday we finished the really tough one she had started before we got there so we put out another one in the afternoon and finished it before bed. Woohoo!

We drove home today and the second thing that I did after unloading the van was to wash off the sandy toys. Some of them went right back into the sandbox but the ones that didn't start out there got a good dunking and they won't be let back into the house until they receive a certificate of lack-o-sand from moi.

It was nice to come back today rather than tomorrow because 1) the traffic was way better than it will be tomorrow and 2) we still have tomorrow to spend together before the work week begins.

Thanks Kirsten, Daniel & Noel - we had a tremendous time!