365: Day 185- Beach Day (and Goodbye, Vacation)

7/5/13: Yesterday's trip to the beach was a total bust, so we decided to try again today. It is Derek's last day of vacation and we wanted to make the most of it. We are also in the middle of a heat wave on the East Coast, so you either need to sit in air conditioning all day or go to the beach!

Apparently everyone else in northern New England had the same idea - Crane Beach was packed!!! Thankfully we got there early enough to find a good spot. The only way to survive this kind of heat is to put our new umbrella to good use.

The kids were hot but had a blast! Sun hats and sunglasses were a must today.

Silas spent most of the day playing alongside the water,

Whereas Zoe wanted to be IN the water.

We were all very happy to be able to cool off whenever we needed!

We lasted 4 hours at the beach today, which is pretty impressive for all of us. It was a great way to end another fun (and busy!) vacation!

********************

Cook's Notes:

We have been enjoying the last few nights of vacation to cook and eat together. Last night we had Indonesian Chicken Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing. The peanut sauce is so simple and easy, I will definitely be adding this to my list of go-to's. I left out the Sriracha and dressed S&Z's salads, and then added it in before doing ours. We used a mix of napa cabbage and galisse lettuce, and added radishes, yellow peppers, and haruki turnips. Derek did the chicken on the grill with a simple dry rub. Tonight we made America's Test Kitchen Pasta with Spicy Cauliflower Sauce - we used a gorgeous head of purple cauliflower from last week's Farmer's Market, and we subbed hot turkey sausage for the bacon, which meant we dropped the red pepper flakes. This recipe makes a huge amount, so I'm glad Derek has some leftovers to take to work tomorrow night.

Comments

Silas' Blog

Well it's been a busy 3 years since I last posted! Stay tuned as we may have more posts coming now that it looks like I have a new contributor... Silas recently read a book called "Starting Your Own Blog", and now he is bound and determined for us to let him start his own blog! We convinced him that he should start out by drafting content and a posting calendar. We made templates this morning and he wrote his first "post" today!

Parks

We decided to get Zoe's haircut on Saturday morning at a place geared towards kids called Snip-Its . Neither Derek nor I anticipated what a meltdown Zoe was going to have. The haircut is half-assed at best and Derek will have to fix it when she's more calm. We were so traumatized that we headed to the park to get the day going on a better foot! We went back to Larz Anderson, the park where the Psychiatry picnic was held on Thursday . It is really close to our house and is lovely and shaded. I think it's one of my new favorite spots! The kids like it too :) S&Z love playing with wood chips, so there was a lot of that! Snacks were enjoyed on the bench and I tried to get a few pictures of the haircut... Excuse me, I'm chewing pretzels :) This morning we met up with Wendy, Dave, Sydney & Ivy at the Newton Center Playground. It was HOT HOT HOT, and there wasn't too much shade. The kids have inherited my low tolerance for heat, so they spe

York's Wild Kingdom

Friday was our last day of vacation and check-out time at Village by the Sea was 10am. We wanted to do one last fun thing before coming back to Boston, so we headed to York's Wild Kingdom in York, Maine. The zoo had just opened when we got there, and apparently lots of other families had the same idea as us! This zoo is definitely aimed for little kids, and Silas and Zoe (and Derek!) had a blast! Our first stop was the butterfly sanctuary, and this was definitely my favorite part of the day... We had the kids both in and out of the stroller throughout our visit. The zoo was packed with people, so it was a little nuts having them roam free and try to manage an empty double stroller too. But they were happier to get in and out of the stroller at their leisure with all the walking. There were several highlights for the kids - all of which involved feeding the animals from your hand. One was the duck pond, The deer were pretty awesome, As was the petting zoo

The Zoe and Silas Show

Search This Blog