Vacation photo dump: the beach

Salty air, the sound of waves, bare feet on the sand and kids chasing seagulls (turns out those aren't so easy to catch)... yep, we escaped to the beach over the weekend. On a whim, just for a few days. With pretty much zero time to pack.

It was lovely.

Of course the kids caught croup. Sigh. Nothing is perfect, right?

It was still wonderful to get away for a bit before school starts again. And it was even better to spend my birthday on the beach. Not wiping crumbs off the counter, baking my own cake or folding laundry. Nope, just eating ice cream, sitting in the sand, having some fresh mint tea and watch the kids have fun.

Here's a little photo dump of our mini vacation:

Big brother with his surfer style hair. Too cute. Of course I get an eye roll when I say that. "Mom!"

My men!

 Don't you just love those chubby feet? He's just growing out of the toddler chubbiness.

And he is one big funny goofball. Making the strangest faces when I try to take his photo.

It was even warm enough to splash around the water a bit.

Beach sunsets. Seriously: is there anything better?

Love the light.

I didn't really want to leave, but our house wasn't directly at the beach and the kids had to get some sleep.

Going shopping for a bit. Mmmmhhh, chocolates! Tartes! Quiches!

Seagulls. Hungry seagulls.

Catching crabs and other tiny critters.

Trying to relax for a bit.

"All seashells are pretty, mommy". So they all went into the bucket. 

This is a seagull trap. Seriously. The bait? Waffles. I mean, you can catch anything or anyone with waffles, right?

Except for seagulls as it turns out.

Big brother didn't give up though. It was pretty funny.

I could spend days just wandering the beach and looking for treasures.

Some are real, others images I treasure, scenes and details captures that will remind me of the beach when I am back at home.

Some black and white -  I really don't know why I don't do this more often. I mean, it's not like you have to use a different roll of film and decide in advance anymore, right?

Well, so much for now. I need to catch up on my sleep - the remaining week will be busy and there are way too many photos of big brother's birthday still on my camera, waiting to be sorted and edited. But for now, I will go to bed and think of walking barefoot on the beach.

Beware of the sharks: party preparations

I could have sworn big brother would go for a guitar party this year. Sworn.

I was so sure that I actually got blow-up guitars and guitar shaped key rings, weeks ago. I mean, after this year's Rock Star Cats for carnival it had to be a guitar party, right? Right?

Wrong.

Instead, we're in for a shark party this year.

Which is ok for me - I mean, just do a quick search for shark party on Pinterest. See what I mean? Lots of ideas.

Good thing that I was anyway planning to reuse last year's bunting and the blueish party supplies with the stars. I mean, it's blue, right? Goes with sharks if you ask me. And besides, the store still carries some of it, so I could stock up on napkins, balloons and some other cute things.

Such as the cutest little favor boxes. Turns out they're too small for goodie bags, but they make nice invites, at least if you fill them with some gummy sharks. And they just happen to give those homemade invites something to cling to, because just printed on plain paper they looked just that. Plain.  Punch a hole, tie them to the boxes with some green raffia and - ah, much better. To anyone who's interested, this is where I found the shark clipart I used in the invites.

And since I has a kid-free house last week, I got the goodie bags out of the way as well. I don't know about you, but I don't really like when my kids come home from birthday parties with a lot of little things. They are treasures to them for a day or so, and then these little things turn into clutter. And they start to multiply. Take over their rooms, the basket of miscellaneous toys in the living room (it's a junk basket, if you ask me, and we weed it out every couple of months, usually sending at least a quarter of its contents to the trash).

Using simple white bags, I glued the shark to the front, added the guests' name on some washi tape and cut teeth into the top. They got filled with some more shark candy, a plastic shark and, my favorite, a shark bell for their bikes. Not too much crap, right? Right? 

Finally I did birthday shirts, and the traditional felt birthday crown and yarn wreath. Luckily I could reuse last year's letter and garland and just cut out the number and pinned it to the wreath. Easy. Which was good, considering the fact that I had been crafting, sewing and eating gummy sharks all day.

Stay tuned for more!

Swenja

Summer fun

941. That is the number of photos I took during our summer staycation. It took me two nights to edit that down to about half, and then some more to pick a few to show you guys.

With the new garden and the first time ever we had to take our vacation during the school holidays, we ended up staying at home. And we had the most gorgeous weather one could imagine. The kids had a blast, and while we didn't get to sit around and relax much, it did feel so good not to look at the watch and stick to a strict schedule for two weeks. The kids went to bed when it got dark (which is way past 9pm here), we had dinner when we were hungry and got out of bed when we had slept long enough.

Bliss.

Still lots of garden projects, a fence and more weeds than I can count, but also lots of pure and simple summer fun.

I love that my boys are still perfectly happy with the simple things. Here's what we did:

Starting out with the kiddie pool. Which got very warm after a few hours. Little brother didn't care though.

Grilling bread on a stick over the new fire pit. I think by now I can make the dough in my sleep.

Having the neighbors and kids over for grilling marshmallows.

Decided we need a bigger pool and finally went and bought one of those incredibly ugly blue blow-up things. Not pretty, but sooooo much fun!

With unusually hot and sunny weather here, it was so worth it. Big brother could have stayed in that thing all day.

Tractor pulling events are a must around here. This is the season's first, and the boys are quite the experts by now.

Taking a day trip to a local museum. I wish we had taken more of those trips, but with some work creeping into the staycation, plus garden projects, summer flu and the heat, we often opted for just staying in the pool.

This is an old schoolhouse. What a far cry from today's fully digital, touch-screen whiteboards! Or take the school's restroom...

The biggest attraction however, was the museum cat.

Harvesting radishes. Big brother did that as a school project and we ended up planting the seedlings into the new garden.

Little brother also picked his radishes, though he didn't really like eating them.

The harvest.

They looked a little wonky from replanting the fairly big seedlings, but they still did taste good. Can't wait to start next year's crop.

Meanwhile, there are always ice cream sandwiches...

Now it's back to work and the weather has also cooled off somewhat. But despite all the work, I think we could do another staycation. I'm sure a full service, all inclusive hotel would have been less work, but the kids had so much fun just enjoying their home and the neighbor kids, all without school, schedules, kindergarten or homework. 

How has your summer been?

Cheers,

Swenja