The Beach!

Ben wrapped up his last day of 1st grade on Friday - his report card said that he is "a great student" and some supplemental materials sent home listed his reading level (for summer reading) as 4th grade level. Way to go Ben!

To start off our summer vacation we packed up and headed to the beach, where we're staying for a week at a house rented by my parents, who will be joining us here on Monday. We arrived on the island at around 3:30 pm, checked in at the rental office, found the house, found the beach, and everything seemed to be going quite nicely.

The kids loved the ocean (even Becca whose last beach experience 2 years ago did not go well) and even Ben (who insisted all week that he wouldn't go in the water because he is afraid of jellyfish). What was meant to just be a walk to check out the beach turned into an hour and a half of playing in the water, and by the time we dragged them back to the house and cleaned up, it was nearly 7.

By this point we were hungry and had just registered that one of the two central air units in the house was not working. So Joel called maintenance, who promised to send someone out, and we headed out to dinner, where it was 8pm before we finally got our food, and the kids were about ready to implode from being hungry/tired.

We got home around 9, just as the a/c repair guy pulled up. A problem immediately arose, which was that none of us could get into the house. The lock is a keypad with a code that changes every week, and apparently they had given us the code that was about to expire, instead of the new code. It took about a half hour of phone calls and sitting on the front steps with tired whiny children before we finally got the correct number to open the door. The a/c guy fixed the unit that wasn't working -- some problem with the circuit breaker. But as of this writing I am not convinced that the other unit is working properly, now.

Anyway, so begins our beach vacation! More updates (and better pictures) to follow.