Week 11

 And we're off!!!  To the beach that is:)  Yep, it's time for Goldberg-Flaherty-Hartman-Glasser week at Bethany Beach Delaware!  The kids were fabulous on the 4+ hour drive...we didn't even stop until about 3 hours into it at this little park with wooden playground equipment!

We got to our house, a beautiful 4-bedroom house in a neighborhood about 10 minutes drive to the beach. The first night was all about getting settled, so it was pizza, playground and bed!

 The next day, we explored the neighborhood and the beach. We went to the clubhouse and went swimming, we played some ping pong (Aiden is surprisingly very good!) And then went to the Cottage Inn for dinner. A perfect family restaurant that serves yummy seafood and PASTA (a MUST for the kids). In fact Mia and Aiden ate their entire share...and that was A LOT of pasta...they may turn into pasta:)

Auntie Rissa gave the kiddos some gifts, spiderman bingo was a huge hit with Aiden!! And the house even had some other games to play like Dora Candyland!! SO fun.

 We spent another day at the beach where we attempted some sand castles...pretty hard with the waves as rough and as high as they were, and then Aiden saw some kids making their own wading pool out of sand, so Uncle Ken bought him a huge shovel so he could make one too.
I wasn't sure if the kids were going to be big fans of the beach, because they weren't that fond of our beach outings in Dubai (it was pretty hot right before we left, so I don't really blame them) but they seemed to love Bethany. There were a ton of people, we had umbrellas to shield the sun and the waves were pretty impressive...they seemed to LOVE it!  Check out the pic of them cudding in their wading pool...and Mia and her Grandma/Meamaw sandwitch!

 I scored some cuddle time with my little pumpkin too!!!  We discovered that even though we live at the beach, sand at our beach is different then sand on the Atlantic Ocean...the sand in Dubai is a lot finer and softer--and even lighter in color. AND there were practically NO shells in Delaware, people must have taken them!! In Dubai, you can still collect different shells and rocks on the beach.
Maris and I had a great time together too. She brought her kindle and let me check out some of her books--I started reading "The Help!" SO so good...Because I got some "help" with my kids, I got a chance to read 3 chapters, not too shabby!!!
 
True to Goldberg family beach tradition, we found a night to go play some miniature golf.  Captain Jacks mini golf was a lot of fun!  There were some cool courses to walk through and the pirate ship at the end was impressive. Aiden had some pretty good swings...Mia seemed to just wander all over the place, I think Ron and Wendy were the real winners (after all, they are the most competitive:) Wait, I take that back, I think Maris is the most competitive:)
 And we're back to the beach with my baywatch beauty (or should I say "Babywatch beauty!) Is that show still on??
While the water was much colder than in Dubai (anything is colder than Dubai) it was still doable...once you got past that aching feet phase...I never did go ALL the way in and jump waves, but we did make it in up to our knees, so that was pretty good.

 We spent a lot of time collecting water with our buckets...the kids got knocked over a few times, but they were troopers.

 Speaking of troopers...Uncle Ken made it to the beach by Wednesday night. On his quest for the perfect tan (are we still in the 80's?) he decided to lay out, face up, sun-block free...seriously? You can guess what happened!! Burned.  TOTALLY burned.  Poor guy, think flashback to the movie "Faceoff!" Okay, maybe not THAT bad, but pretty close!

While Ken was tanning, Aiden was spending quality time with Auntie Rissa playing a new IPHONE game called "Cut the Rope!" He was IN HEAVEN as she sat with him for hours, I'm not kidding, HOURS to play this game. Actually, I think she was in heaven too...she didn't seem to complain at all, getting cuddles from our boy!

On one of our last days there, we stayed at the beach the WHOLE day. We had to stay past 5 in order to get to fly the kite Maris brought. So we did. The kids had a blast running down the beach with their kite...
And that night, we made it to Rehobeth beach where we got to go on the boardwalk, play skee ball AND go get the world famous Nicaboli for dinner!!! Can't believe Nicola pizza is still around after all these years!!

 We had a fabulous week at the beach!!! Thanks for a wonderful vacation Grandma and Grandpa!!! xooxxo