2003-07-28 - 10:13 a.m.

We're back from the beach and it all went very well. We left on Friday morning and arrived in Ocean City around 12:30pm. Our hotel room wasn't ready, so we headed over to visit with the Meleney's at their house on 138th street. Caitlin couldn't stop talking about the pool so after a lunch of KFC/Taco Bell we got the kids ready and went back to our hotel around 2:30pm. Our room was ready so we hauled some of stuff to the room and then went to the indoor pool. Nicolas and Caitlin had a blast playing in the pool and I got in with Noelle who also LOVED it! She kicked her feet the whole time and splashed her hands getting both of our faces wet but she loved it. Nicolas did great swimming around in his swim vest. After a while we returned to our room and the Meleney's went back to their beach house. The kids took a nice long nap while we got cleaned up. That evening we headed back to the Meleney's place for dinner and dessert. That night we got the kids to bed and around 11:30pm Nicolas woke up crying and complaining that his neck and his ears hurt. Frank was ready to pack up and head home right then and there, but instead he went out to find a place to get some Children's Tylenol and Nicolas took a dose of that and passed out about 5 minutes later. He woke up fine the next morning.

Saturday we got up and took the kids down to the boardwalk to walk around. Noelle fell alseep in the stroller and we just walked the boardwalk with Nicolas for a while. After about 45 minutes we went back to the van and headed to the hotel for a morning swim. We then came back to our room for lunch and naps where the kids slept for another 3 hours! Frank and I also managed to sneak in a nap. After waking up we decided to take a little walk down to the beach so we put the kids in the wagon and headed over there. The water was VERY COLD so Nicolas and I just put our feet in and then he wanted to chase seagulls on the beach and then asked about the pool again. We went back to the hotel and took another short swim in the pool before getting cleaned up and ready for dinner. We headed back to the Meleney's beach house to have a birthday dinner there for Marc with a lot of their family. Nicolas played with Caitlin and caught fireflies. We had a great dinner of steak and crabcakes and then some cake before heading back to our hotel for the night.

Sunday morning we woke up early and hit the road so we could get ahead of any beach traffic. We were home by 10am and then unpacked and started laundry and other cleaning up for the upcoming week. We took a short trip out to a local pool company to view some above-ground pools and get some pricing. We have someone coming out on Tuesday to give us estimates on an above-ground pool and deck at our home and if all goes well we just might have a pool by the end of the summer. Frank and I love the water and so do our kids, so it only makes sense to have a small pool at home to enjoy and so we can invite others over to enjoy it with us. We'll see how things go.