Rehoboth!

My sister Marah is 'living' with us again this summer.  And by 'living' I mean she's a counselor at a camp and we never see her.  Great for her (earning money for college), a little sad for us.  But she told us early on that the camp was taking them all to Rehoboth Beach on July 30th, so we decided to meet her there.  And, of course, we had to invite a few friends--the Oliveras, Finnigans, and Parsons.

Our little compound on the beach

Marley & Carlos didn't want to sit by us.

(Carlos didn't want to have to move when the tide came in)

And pack and plays at the beach?  GENIUS.  Wish I'd thought of it...

75% of the Blood family.

Jon refuses to quit eating for something as ridiculous as a family picture.

Beach Princess

Seth spent most of the day digging in the sand.

My favorite part was watching him interfere with the other boys.  

They were feeding the seagulls by throwing cookies and crackers in the air and waiting for the gulls to swoop down and eat them.  As the food landed in the sand, Seth would run over and bury it.  The other boys weren't very happy about it, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

His other tactic was pretty good, too: 

Chase the birds with a shovel.

Snuggling with Daddy

It was all fun and games...

...until the sharks came: 

Okay, fine.  Those are dolphins.  But still super awesome to see them so close!

They were literally just 10 feet out from the end of the pier in the picture above.

Four happy little boys.

Guess which one is ours?  

Oh, that would be the one practically covered from head to toe, plus sunscreen.

There's no escaping the redhead genetics in this family!

Sommer, me, Marley & Kara

I would just like to point out that all four of us have had babies within the last year.  We look good, don't we?

Oh, and two in this picture are expecting again. (Not me.)

Now we look REALLY good, don't we?!

Emma & Catherine

Is there such thing as 'arranged friendship'?  

Because we decided these two were friends before they were born.

So as you can see from the (lack of) pictures of Marah, we spent, hmmm...maybe 20? 30? minutes total with her.  But who can blame her?  If you were 21 would you rather be hanging out babysitting your niece and nephew or hanging out with your friends?  Yep.  But it was a good excuse to get us to the beach!

After the beach we all had dinner at Ihop before making the two hour drive home.  Marley & I had a nice chat in the back seat while the babies (mostly) slept.  

I hope we'll do this again next summer!