8 states and 36 hours of driving later...

We arrived home from our adventure out East yesterday around 5 pm! We had a fabulous time and enjoyed every minute of our time with family. Ava and Luke really did well in the van, we had our moments and a few meltdowns, but overall, considering they are 2 and 4, they really exceeded our expectations. As I guessed the dvd player was a hit...We also read books, made necklaces and bracelets with beads, colored, made animals out of pipe cleaners, had a lot of snacks, and of course took an occassional nap. Our first day in New Jersey proved to be rather exciting as two of my nephews and a friend were brought home in police cars! According to the police, they were in a restricted area (never thought I would hear my 10 year old niece say something like "There aren't any signs about tank trails over by the pond!"), but we checked it out and the kids didn't do anything wrong other than ride bikes with out helmets. Still, it was quite a sight to see 4 police cars pull up and unload my nephews and their bikes. I just had to take a picture, for posterity's sake, of course.Day 2 was the long awaited Rookfest! As we were visiting a military base, this year we had a military theme. Lauri and I were the Airforce, Andy and my mom were the Marines, Barb and Charles were the Army, and Scott and my dad were the Navy. We all had names (mom was General Lou, I was Sara the Red Baron, Lauri was Kamacausey, Andy, much to his dismay, was Corporal O"Rourke, complete with the typo, not to mention outranked by my mom, and so on). At the end of the day, it was the Navy on top...And the Army on the bottom. Scott (founder of Rookfest) was a little excited to capture his first Rookfest title (can you tell by his shirt?).We even picked up a new lawn statue on our drive through Pennsylvania for the losers. Don't you love the nude colored gorilla?!

We also spent a few days on the Jersey shore. Luke loved playing in the sand and building a sand castle with Uncle Charles. We also enjoyed trying to outrun the waves. The water was COLD!Andy and I tried a little boogie boarding (you can see Ava's Ariel board in the picture below). The waves were unbelievable one of the days we were at the beach, and once your body was numb due to the figid water temp, it was a lot of fun. Andy came back with a battle wound, one of the waves knocked him to the ocean floor and he got a scrape on the side of his face. He was really kind of proud of it. It sure felt nice to stretch out on the sand after playing so hard! In my next post I will write about our trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (or Liverty as Ava would say). An amazing experience! Stay tuned!