Life's a Beach

The Stefany family made our annual trek to Ocean City, NJ for summer vacation. My parents kindly keep the family tradition of renting a beach house for two weeks and allowing their kids and grand kids to take over the house with noise and loot. As you might recall, our vacation was interrupted last year with a trip to the hospital with Evie. This year we stayed out of the hospital and enjoyed TEN days at the beach. Jason had to go back and forth to work, but spent two long weekends with us.

This year was definitely the craziest it's been in recent memory for me. 9.5 people in a 3 bedroom, one floor house was a tad close for 8 days. Luckily the weather was OCNJ perfect and we spent a lot of time outdoors. I am so thankful that Evie is a walker or I think I would have been even more exhausted than I already was.

Evie, like her mother, would rather stay sand free and away from the scary, unpredictable ocean. She spent most of her beach time dumping containers of water in the blow up pool. I was F-I-N-E fine with this. With each passing day she grew braver and eventually sat in the hard sand playing with the shovel and bucket. Once Jason returned, he took her in the ocean. She seemed ok in the safety of her daddy's arms. I was fully expecting to chase Evie all over the beach this year. Maybe about 5 minutes a day I had to do so. Glorious! Evie's cousins were a different story... They looked like cinnamon covered donuts all week.

Another highlight for Evie, and her proudly viewing parents, was the playground at 34th street. We went almost everyday since it was only a 3 block walk from the house. Again, Evie started off a little hesitant and reverted back to crawling on the ramps, yet after a few days, she was practically running up and down the ramps. She loved the slides. She went down on her belly, back, and also sat up perfectly on the tunnel slide. You will see ample pictures of her on the playground.

Like I said earlier, Evie being a walker made this vacation so much easier (and fun) for me. She is steady on her feet and got a lot of exposure to different walking surfaces- sand, cement, cushion stuff at the playground, and the porch. Evie would pace back and forth on the front deck for at least 20 minutes. She also liked sitting on G or Poppops's laps and point to all the seagulls, people, or dogs that passed by. Evie and Cole squawked at Hannah below as she rode her bike. Evie made us all smile with her fascination with the view from the front porch.

All of us were pooped by the end of the day. Even with the ratio of 6 adults to 3 kiddos. Next year will be even crazier with another baby! Check out our photos for more glimpses of our vacation. Thanks G and Poppop for having us and so patiently caring for all the kids... Even the ones in our 30s : )

OC 2012