The Last Bit of Summer

As it typically does, August goes by so fast!  With the last bit of summer left, the girls were bittersweet about it coming to an end.  They were excited to get back to school and see friends, but they love the freedom and relaxed nature of summer, so it’s always hard to see it come to an end.

Every time we go to my parents’ house, the girls love to get in the hammock.  This last time we were there, Poppy (a.k.a “the Popinator” as they named him) took over swinging duties.  Thanks to the Popinator, the girls were flying high and hanging on for dear life – loving every minute of it!

We brought Cayenne out with us so she and Magnolia could get in some more play time.  They are quickly becoming good buddies.  Maggie is no longer as intimidated by Cayenne, and Cayenne has toned down her behavior a bit around Maggie.  So now they’re comfortable to play with each other, wrestle, and chase.  I think they are going to love the years ahead of being playmates!

In the last week before school started, we also held our annual bake sale to benefit a charity.  This year, like last year, all the money went to International Justice Mission – one of the only reasons worth baking pans of cookie bars, brownies, and dozens of cupcakes for! 

We rounded out our summer with an activity that I’ve been waiting to do for awhile.  We live within a short drive to the W&OD trail, so we drove our bikes to the trail, rode about five miles down the trail to our favorite pizza place, Fireworks, then rode back after dinner.  It was a good test to see how much the girls would bike.  We’ve biked this distance before to head the other direction for ice cream, but it was Nina’s first longish bike ride since coming out of the cast, and she did great.  So, we’ll definitely have to do this again, and maybe even try taking them longer.

   

A Trip to the Beach!

All summer long Nina has wanted to go to the beach.  Since she broke her ankle at the end of June and didn’t get the cast off until last week, it felt like nearly her whole summer was taken up with being in a cast.  So, after she got her cast off, I surprised the girls with some news that we were going to take a little beach trip together.  Mark had mini-camp for his boys’ travel team every night after work this past week, so he wasn’t able to go, but I asked my mom if she’d like to come with us, and she did, so we were very excited for a girls’ trip to the beach!

After Nina got her cast off, it was difficult for her to walk at first.  Initially, I was worried that she’d not be able to do much at all at the beach, but each day out of her cast she seemed to improve, and the skin on her leg and foot healed, so by Sunday night I was confident that she’d be ok to at least walk around at the beach pretty well.

So, with everyone excited, we left early on Monday morning to head down to Virginia Beach and arrived there a little after lunch.  The girls couldn’t wait to get down to the ocean, so we literally dropped our bags in the hotel room, threw on bathing suits and went immediately down to the ocean.

The girls had such a fun time!  In our past beach experiences, Lyla used to be the one who wanted to play in the sand, and Nina was always in the water.  This time, Lyla wanted to boogie board most of the time (mixed with some time collecting shells), and Nina still just wanted to play in the waves. Looking at her playing so hard in the waves, you would never have guessed that she had been in a cast just a few days prior.  I was really surprised that she was able to tolerate as much as she did with her leg, but my mom and I both thought it was probably really good therapy for getting mobility back and strengthening the muscles in her leg.

With the girls not wanting to take a break from the ocean at all, I had to make them come out at one point just to rest for about 15 minutes (also so Mouse and I could get a break from getting pounded by the waves), but they were chomping at the bit to get back in the ocean.

The waves were pretty big and the current got stronger as we got later in the day, and Mouse and I were pretty tired from being in the ocean with the girls, so we dragged the girls out of the water around 5:30 to head up to the hotel to shower for dinner.  We found a great little restaurant just a block away from our hotel room, so we walked to dinner, enjoyed a nice meal outside, then walked down the boardwalk for some ice cream.

Lyla hit a fatigue wall midway through her ice cream, so Mouse volunteered to go back to the hotel with her, but Nina wanted to stay out, so she and I kept walking on the boardwalk. Nina has spent all summer reading the Rick Riordan books in the Percy Jackson series all of which center around Greek (and a bit of Roman) mythology.  She read a total of ten of the books plus extra reading about Greek mythology, so when we found a statue of Neptune and fun little outdoor concert next to the boardwalk in Neptune Park, she was so excited!  We hung out at the concert, listened to the music and people watched, then made our way back to the hotel.  According to Mouse, Lyla was asleep within a few minutes of them making it back to the hotel.  Suffice to say, I think they were tired from their day!

By the next morning, they were itching to get immediately down to the beach.  We ate a quick breakfast in our hotel, and they were down on the beach by 8am.  They dug in the sand, found a dead crab and buried it, looked for some shells, then were dying to go back up to the room so they could get their suits on and head back into the water.

 

While back on the hotel balcony getting sunscreen on for the day, we saw a few porpoises swimming by! Thankfully that was the only marine life with dorsal fins that we saw in the water!!!

Day two at the beach was the same as the first.  Lyla boogie boarded, and Nina played hard in the waves. 

After another really full day on the beach, some sunburn and some sunglass drama, we briefly took in a little action from a surfing competition, then got on the road late that evening to head to Hartfield for the night.

Our plan for Day 3 was to head to the river beach this time, so from Hartfield we had an easy drive to the beach at Yorktown.  There were some really nice beach and swimming areas along the York River, and aside from some seaweed issues, the river was a nice low-key beach option for the day.

 

Nina took a little time on the beach to read while Lyla played on the rocks and tried to feed some sea gulls Pirate Booty.

We finished our day in Yorktown with some ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s, a walk on the historic river walk, and then made a run for the car when the rain finally arrived.

We headed back home the next day, but I was so glad that the girls got their “beach fix” in before school starts.  It was great to just get away for a few days together, have some fun, make some memories, and it was even more special to have Mousey along with us!  What a great trip!

Magnolia Visits

Yesterday was my parents’ 44 anniversary!  So, while they took a few hours to go golfing, we did some puppy sitting of Magnolia at our house.  Admittedly, I’m a little puppy photo obsessed.  For one - there’s nothing cuter than a puppy, for two – you have to be watching them all the time, so one might as well entertain themselves with taking some pictures.

So, here’s a link of a few photos from our time with Maggie.  https://goo.gl/photos/zoZz4g6bcHDEjDiP6

Family Time at Hartfield

This past week we decided to take some time to head down to Hartfield for some family fun.  We got in late on Wednesday and then got up to head off to Busch Gardens for the day on Thursday.  Based on what we heard from others, we were optimistic about Nina being able to ride all the rides there even in a cast, however, we got there and found out that they were going to restrict her from riding some of her favorite roller coasters.  Basically, any roller coaster that didn’t have enclosed leg areas were off limits for her, so that ruled out a lot of the ones she wanted to do, but we still had a fun day.

  

 

Surprisingly, she was allowed to ride the Tempesto.  It’s their newest ride and a very intense looking one if you ask me.  Lyla wasn’t tall enough to ride it (not that she’d want to), so she and I waited while Mark and Nina rode.  It wasn’t open the last time we were at Busch Gardens, so at least it was a plus that she was able to ride it this time. 

We rode everything she was allowed to ride, and we even got to use the handicap entrance to some rides because Guest Services gave her an accessibility bracelet – it allowed her to go to the front of the line without having to wait as long as the ride was on the printed out list of “allowable” rides for her.  So, getting the family to the front of the line was the up-side to not being able to ride all the things she wanted.

   

That evening, we walked down to the water and looked for osprey, eagles, and any other wildlife.

Then everyone was pretty wiped out after the day at Busch Gardens and puppy day care (for Cayenne).  Yes, she visited Sandy Creek Pet Resort for the day while we were at BG. You should have seen her when we dropped her off.  It was the saddest thing – ears down, tail tucked, looking at the car with big eyes as we drove away.  The nice lady working there said she was pretty nervous at first, but then the lady took her on a long walk of the property and that helped her settle in.  She sure was happy to see us though when we picked her up that evening.

After some really big storms during the night, we woke up to a beautiful morning at Hartfield. We had contemplated going to Water Country again on Friday, but we were told to expect much of the same in terms of not letting Nina on certain rides because of her cast, plus the day was supposed to get increasingly cloudy as it went on, so we opted for waiting until we visit Water Country again.

 

The girls did a little fishing in the morning, and Nina caught a catfish. 

  

After fishing we tried a new little place for lunch and the local bowling alley.  It ended up being a great way to spend a cloudy afternoon.

   

Saturday was on tap to be a beautiful day from start to finish, and the girls wanted to go fishing again, so this time we tried a large pond down the street from the house.  Again, Nina caught a fish.

Even if they don’t catch much, they seem to enjoy trying.  They love to cast out and reel in, and they have a lot more patience for it now than they used to.  Of course, that makes someone in the family rather happy…

 

Lyla really wanted to show the kayaking skills she got while down at Hartfield with the family the weekend of July 4th (when we stayed up here with newly casted Nina).  She did a great job kayaking on her own.  Cayenne proved to be quite the pest while we were in the kayaks.  The first picture is how she spent 99% of her time.  The picture next to it (when she’s not swimming inches from the kayak) was the exception.  She tried climbing in the kayak with us (not good), and basically just swam right next to the kayak, whining.  That’s our velcro vizsla – never one to want to be too far from her people!

  

After getting cleaned up from kayaking, we tried a local winery – The Dog and Oyster Winery.

Mark and I did a tasting, and the kids decorated oysters and fed treats to the four dogs that the winery has on property. 

  

After that we took a late afternoon stop off at Merroir. We had some oysters and some sea food and enjoyed the beautiful view from our table.

  

 

After a fun day, we had a peaceful evening view to round out a fun family trip.