As I type thing, I am drinking a boozy milk shake that contains a ground up chocolate chip cookie and coconut fudge ice cream. Just to give you some context on how TOTALLY worth it the 16 hour drive to South Carolina is.

Sunday:

The rarest animal in the aquarium: my husband

Cupcake face

I took this picture with a telephone.

She’s a cat burglar making her getaway.

Monday:

PEEK A BOO

Extremely loud trip to BJ’s

Happy Birthday Mr. Sendak. We’ll keep the wild rumpus going for you.

Tuesday:

Hanging up his coat for his last day of school

She really, really loves lemonade

Taking the animals to the vet

Wednesday:

Stuck in traffic and we haven’t even left Connecticut. Evan’s face explains it all.

Too cool for Delaware

Old timey fun with Mormor

Friday:

Spoiled, spoiled children

Spoiled, spoiled me

Never leaving.

Saturday:

Pre-pool relaxation

A very Low Country lunch

Who needs forks when you can pick up your cake like a sandwich?

I can’t even believe we have MORE DAYS of vacation before we leave…and when we do we have MORE FUN STUFF to do before we go back to Connecticut. My children are going to sleep for a week when we get home. It will be glorious.

Please excuse a gratuitous number of photos this week. It was what one might call “eventful”.

Sunday:

She has already grown accustomed to a life of luxury

Cleopatra directing her slave barge around the pool

TWO DISHWASHERS

Caroline ate that ENTIRE block of cheese

Monday:

It feels sort of wrong to watch Fresh Beat Band in the room filled with authentic old movie posters

Impossibly green lawn

Burying herself in the sand

Bubbles bubbles bubbles my bubbles

Tuesday:

CFA on the way out of town, obviously

Step 1: Aim phone out window without looking Step 2: press button 42 times Step 3: get one crooked picture of South of the Border because your trip wouldn’t be complete without it.

I told them if they won the lottery we could go back to the beach house

Wednesday:

Pushy sheep

Friendly bird

IN YO FACE Antelope

Adorable almost-twins (Judah is 3 days older than Caroline!)

Thursday:

Kisses for MorMor

Musical genius (player piano)

My favorite player piano roll, since I was a small child who would dance around a pole in my grandmother’s basement. Yeah.

This is what happens when you visit childless friends – a chest in front of the basement door hole and Jenga as building blocks.

Friday:

REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THE BOAT

IT’S 105 DEGREES OUT WHY THE HELL ARE WE NOT INSIDE???

PotBelly Baby

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

She’s a Pinkberry fan.

Saturday:

Storm damage in my parent’s neighborhood. (Fun fact for people this might mean something to: this is Jamie’s old house)

Yikes. No one was hurt.

Good luck climbing over this branch Mom.

Inside: cold and dark. Outside: SURFACE OF THE SUN.

Also we ate a bunch of stuff and went fishing and rode on a carousel and went to the pool and went to ANOTHER pool with a friend I hadn’t seen in 12 years and a bunch more stuff I didn’t take pictures of because I was having too much fun and/or trying to keep the kids from accidentally killing themselves and/or me. But tomorrow we are finally headed home to Connecticut and E and Brutus and our normal life…at least until Wednesday when we head up to Massachusetts for the 4th and more beach and more pool. But THEN I’m hoping life will go back to normal and by normal I mean GOOD LORD THESE CHILDREN NEED NAPS.

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!

The beach house has a burned out light bulb, no air conditioning in the elevator, a hot tub that is too hot, and there are too many desserts I have to eat before I leave. So obviously by “unacceptable” I mean WAY MORE THAN ACCEPTABLE. It is still the most amazing house I’ve ever stayed in (or probably WILL ever stay in) in my life.

We’re having an amazing time at the beach, full of swimming and cake and she crab soup (if you don’t know what that is I don’t think we can be friends anymore) and amazing long-time friends who love me despite my overly tired children. Tomorrow I head back to Virginia for a vacation-recovery period at my folk’s house. I’m sure MorMor and Bumpa will be happy to hold Caroline and get Evan cups of milk while I lie on the floor in a coma caused by too much sun and cream-based foods. Although we also have plans to go fishing and swimming and to see some wild animals at the Reston Zoo and I’m hoping to meet up with some of my interwebs friends who live in Northern Virginia (so hey, if you live in Virginia, let’s get together!)

Being here without E has been a little bit of a challenge though. So far Caroline has smashed her face into the ground, tried to drown herself in a tide pool, fallen off the boardwalk into a prickle bush and narrowly avoided running into an alligator (although all of those – especially the last one – are obviously my fault.) She’s a tiny force of nature who cannot be stopped, even by colliding with hard surfaces. And let’s not even talk about the bug bites on Evan’s legs. He looks like a leper, he’s SO chewed up. So my parenting gets about a 3, although the fun level is still about a 9 and as of 4:46 pm on Monday everyone is still alive. Look! I have proof!

HELP HELP MY MOTHER IS NEGLECTFUL!

OK, that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Here, how about these?

See? Still alive! And happy! Just don’t look to closely at Evan’s legs in that 3rd picture. And here’s one more to make your head explode:

I’ll be back with how to travel with two toddlers on your own travel tips soon! Oh wait, no. Because my only travel tip is ear plugs. SERIOUSLY.