vacation, with ice cream

i have so much to catch up on, and first up is the belated vacation post! i was a little worried that i wouldn't be able to remember july now that it's october, but as it turns out, this was a memorable trip that all came rushing back as soon as i started flipping through pics. love that. ahhh, so much ice cream!

our flight was early, so i was nervous that violet would be grouchy with her 5am wake-up call, but instead she launched into a delightfully loopy mode and was all about my suggestion to stay in her pajamas. 

i thought she'd change at the airport or on the plane, but she went pjs all the way to the dulles curb.

i can't remember much about the flight which indicates that she was good. we don't really let her use the kindle unless we're traveling, so when we do let her have it, she's super psyched, and i get to blissfully stare at the road or my tray table without having to perform my dozens of (still awful) character voices, as i do on our daily commute(s) when she dictates an imaginary narrative and tells me what to say in whose voice. her favorite genre right now is bunny crime. usually max and ruby and their scrappy crew are pitted against "the ten year olds," two bumbling home alone-style delinquents who are constantly stealing things from them, especially hammers used to construct campsites in the woods. violet's very favorite plot point is when we chase down the ten year olds on our bikes, and max lassos back the pilfered hammer and we escape back to our tent, and then when the ten year olds try to find our tent, they encounter all sorts of booby traps that we left for them (with our magic powers) like tigers and sharks that can breathe out of water. usually this ends when we pull into the preschool parking lot and violet hurriedly insists we must "go to grandma's house" and tattle on the ten year olds for all of their "snatching," and then grandma bunny chastises the ruffians by saying "no scrambled eggs for you for nine weeks!" which delights violet to no end because the ten year olds don't even like eggs, naturally.

my memory of our vacation chronology is somewhat hazier than my memory of the case of the missing hammer, so i'm just going to hit a few highlights. it rained! that's certainly a novelty. we doubled up with sprinklers.

mary ann (kevin's sister) lives on the edge of golf course, and the cousins (and wilson the labradoodle) can play on the green after hours, as long as they promise they won't run in the sand trap, which they promise, and then they chase wilson until he runs into the sand trap and they just haaaave to go in and grab him. rascals.

dan and elizabeth (kevin's older brother and his wife) planned the most ridiculously perfect 4th of july for the whole family -- box seats at the nationals game followed by rooftop fireworks at the army navy country club. seriously! it was so much fun. it was violet's first baseball game, and as dan said, we're in trouble because she's going to think it's always like this:

it was so great to see kevin's parents and all their kids and grandkids together

and while it would have been great anywhere, the view didn't hurt.

speaking of amazing views, by some miracle dan and elizabeth won the country club's lottery wherein a small number of members get seats on the roof overlooking the washington monument for the fireworks. elizabeth's parents have belonged to the club for over 20 years and never won tickets, and we impostors scored seats, what?! i took a bunch of amazing videos of the limbo contest and hula hooping on the roof, but i don't really have any pics. a couple cute ones of the cousins.

violet skipped her nap of course, and after the baseball game, pool, bounce house, an undisclosed number of hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches, and the rooftop party, she should have been ready to drop by 9:30pm, but she somehow managed to keep her eyes open for the entire fireworks display. every time she blinked, i could see the effort to lift her lashes up again. so cute.

other rad family events included a stop at great waves

where violet kindled what i can tell will be a lifelong love of water parks. (side note for so cal old schoolers: wild rivers 2016!) violet only had a couple major meltdowns on the trip, and the biggest one happened when we finally had to remove her bodily from the wave pool as she screamed, "i never want to leave here! i want to sleep here tonight!"

another awesome day, the whole family gathered at the quarterdeck for crabs, as they have managed to do on every one of our visits since my first in 2005. i was evidently too butterfingered to handle my iphone during the feasting this year, but we got a couple cute pics after declan's auntie kate walked the kids to the convenience store for, what else?

if it wasn't already clear that we wanted this vacation to be a SUMMER VACATION, we also drove out to the coast and spent a few days on rehoboth beach.

mary ann and reese joined us, and i have to say, we killed it. lots of seafood, boardwalk pizza and fries, beer, late afternoons on the beach, frozen custard (so much! so good!), and of course funland, the rickety old carnival where not much has changed since kevin and his siblings were kids. this place epitomizes summer nostalgia in all the best ways.

once again i didn't get a picture, but on the second night, violet was determined to ride reese's favorite "big kid" ride, paratrooper. it's kind of like a tilted open-air ferris wheel that spins around fast, forward then backward. you can see it in the background of this pic of her and mary on a car ride:

with her "high heel" sandals on, violet cleared the height requirement for riding with an adult (lucky me, since kevin had already gone with reese on the big seadragon swing). she was just squealing with laughter the whole time and immediately declared "i want to go again!" i gently explained that i was "too dizzy," and if you're guessing that's a euphemism for "too much white wine at dinner," you win a prize!

violet also won a prize at whack-a-mole, which she played as a team with dad. after a couple of nowhere near wins, the kind game operator nudged kevin to "play against" violet because they only require two players to have one winner. i helped violet wield her... what would you call it? giant whacker? and of course she beat kevin handily (at the game) and won a stuffed toy.

violet was pretty much on west coast time, so here are the girls with their kohr bros at 11pm on the walk back to the hotel.

i don't think the 1.5 frozen custards did much to help my pre-bedtime hangover, but they were very tasty.

that reminds me, our vacation wouldn't have been complete without a stop at hovermale's for a dip-top cone. so many memories from this trip, but the one that tops them all took place in the parking lot where everyone stands around eating their ice cream because there isn't anywhere to sit. a couple of thuggy dudes ran over to us with huge smiles on their faces and grabbed kevin's mom for a squeeze: "mrs. lynn! you were my FAVORITE teacher!" twenty years later. such a great moment. melting ice cream, melting hearts.