We finally made it to the beach by 1:00 pm on Saturday. My husband finished working around 8:00 am and we were on the road several hours later. I drove, he slept. Not that I got much sleep that night either. I found things that "needed" to be done. Like rearranging my jewelry box, from when our wonderfully behaved cat knocked it off my dresser. I also thought it the perfect time to put the new pulls on our ceiling fan chains, or at least try to. I wasn't successful.

All this after I told my friend I couldn't play scrabble anymore and needed to go to bed. It was a beautiful weekend. Sun shiny days. There was also a nice breeze blowing in from the ocean. The water temp. was 78 degrees. 78 feels colder than it is when you first stick your toes in. It warms up as you stand around introducing your daughter to the ocean. She liked it. She wasn't overjoyed, but she also wasn’t clinging to my neck in terror, either. We also sat her in the surf, to which she didn't object. She did enjoy playing in the sand. We foolishly sat her in the sand to play while her little bottom was still rather wet. You can imagine how covered in sand her little bottom half was. Added to that, is the cute little cover-up she had on that was also wet and then drug through the sand in the efforts of playing.

Once dried, the cover-up and her bottom-half lost some sand. But alas, my child felt the need to coat her insides with sand as she did her outside. We gave her some crackers, but some fell in the sand. So we put them in her bucket to throw out when we reached the trash can. However, while we were packing up, she found them and started munching. Apparently, the grit did not bother her. We enjoyed our walks on the board walk as well. Mack and Mango pizza, savory loop fries, would be fresh squeezed lemonade, gourmet coffee, fresh roasted peanuts, chocolate covered chocolate chip cookie dough. Not all eaten on the same visit. We also found this nifty store where all merchandise changes color in the sunlight. We made a few purchases.

But alas our time was over and we headed home. The drive is not too long, just 1 hour and 40 minutes. We listened to our book on tape that we hadn’t finished from our trip south. Unfortunately it was an abridgment of Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger. By the end, we could tell a lot was missing. I actually went looking for more CDs. It seemed like there should have been more.

It was a dark and stormy night . . .

Well, maybe not stormy, but it is dark. It is actually tomorrow, since the hand went past the 12. I got home from a Phillies game (our last one at the ballpark for this season, the Phillies won 12-5) shortly before the clock struck 12, but since my friend talks about not playing enough scrabble, I thought I could play some games with her instead of going to sleep and instead of packing. (I am in the process of winning two out of three games.)

Ah yes, and my husband . . . where is he you might ask? He has a project due on Monday and needs to get it done before we leave. So, presently he is at work. I dropped him off there after the game. He will be there overnight.

We each won two games of scrabble. I am going to bed. I still don't think we ever discussed Hu being a shortened name for Hugh. It was Stu.

We are home from our jaunt down south and are loving our own house and our own bed.

Though, I have still not unpacked everything, I did get my daughter's pack n' play put away. And I thought to myself, what a good mom am I. Then I remembered that we would need it for this weekend. So, I made more work for myself in my effort to clean up.

Yes, we are going away this weekend to Ocean City, NJ. Yes, after we just got back from a two week vacation. It was the only weekend available for the house where we are staying. It is free. My mom's cousin lets family stay for free.

Lastly, we are in Alexandria, VA.

We made it here around 7:00 pm. We had a nice leisurely day at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house. We joined a tour of the house, which got interrupted, for me, by a squirmy-wormy daughter, a short time after we were slightly embarrassed by the musical toy that my daughter pressed to play its little ditty in the middle of the tour. This seemingly quiet sound in the car, turned very loud in a reverberating room. It also brought forth a scowl on the tour guide's face and a curt "Could you turn that off?" With red faces and quickly as we could that thing was away from her little hands. After the official tour was complete, our tour guide gave me a personal tour of what I missed. She was as nice as could be.

We also joined the plantation tour, which was actually just a walk down a lane while a lady talked about the plantation. I assumed (silly me) that we would be walking around more of the plantation. We took our time and walked around ourselves after the "tour."

We headed out for Alexandria at about the time we were hoping. We leisurely made our way north. I had told my friend that we wouldn't be there until tomorrow. We surprised her and showed up tonight. Unfortunately, my dear friend was working late on a project that others were suppose to have finished long ago, and she wasn't home yet. I called her and ended up telling her we were here. Very gladly, she wrapped up things at work and came home.

Thinking that her house was too unclean for us to be in, she came in the door cleaning and continued for a good hour. My friend scrubbed, vacuumed, dusted, and fussed forever. She nearly wore herself out. What would happen to our visit then?