Zonked

Whew - what a week! And by week I mean 11 days of family-fun action! Brief recap: road trip down to Ocean City to experience the Jersey Shore in Schomp-family tradition of generations past, followed by an excursion to coastal Virginia to celebrate the nuptials of cousin Nicholas. Here we go:

1st of all: Big super-Thanks to the Jersey Schomps for planning the trip - what an awesome place it turned out to be! Relatively Snookiless SuperFun Boardwalk on the pristine beach a block from our stocked condo - couldn't have done it better!

2nd: thanks to the Smith clan for including us all and getting us together to meet all the new extended family members - great to see everyone!

3rd: thanks to Mazda, inventors of Navigation, the DVD, Pixar and Huggies for making the traveling so smooth. Four separate 5+ hr trips down and back with ZERO unscheduled stops (other than daddy's Maryland 'Welcome Center' pitstop - heave ho!). We've got a Road Warrior Family Here!

So - the major disappointment from the week was that Uncle Steve couldn't get young Hendrik walking, but we were able to comply with his edict that no socks be worn on vacation (aside from our 'kids' night out Atlantic City excursion and a little Par-3 links action). It wasn't too hard with everything you could need a short stroll away - it was so nice to not have any set schedules and just come and go as you please. We got to watch quite a few Copa Mundial partidos, Aunt Lori had crafts galore for the kiddos and you could come and go to/from the spectacular beach to lounge or play- wave-jumping, surfing with HannahMontana, making drizzle 'jersey' castles, throwing/hitting/kicking the FB/VB/soccer balls around and mangling a kite or two. And of course the Boardwalk was always beckoning bringing Evelyn's first mini-golf, bumper cars, ferris wheel and theatre movie experiences (bring some dark sunglasses to Toy Story 3 - you may need them upon making your exit).
Proceeding on with the trip - Evelyn got her sea legs (same as her surf legs) on the Cape May ferry boat ride over to Delaware, conquered the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, snorkeled, kayaked and played with sparklers in Virginia. Quite the whirlwind but the kids hung tough - and were rewarded with a whole new set of family to deal with. But the Smith party owned the Whispering Pines Motel for a few days - dominating poolside and having Uncle Jim grill up some firehouse-worthy grub. With the Nicholas and Elsie wedding celebration on top of that it was seriously almost too much to handle! It wouldn't have been a vacation without having to boot and rally though - and rally we had to en-route back up to the ultimate reprieve at Aunt Marian's new digs back up in Cherry Hill. After going on people overload Evelyn was right at home with her boy Chief and the cats - a great way to hang for one last night before the final stretch back up the Eastern seaboard. Good Trip! good trip..