Cape Cod part 2

So fun at the beach continued, as we spent what we called "a day at the beach" and was really just about two hours. The girls said we needed a kite, and a pail, and a shovel, and then we needed lemonade, and a donut, and gathering all of that took a chunk out of beach time. It turned out two hours was just about right.

Elena can barely spare Christina a backward wave as she heads down to the shore.

Sandcastles!

Then we got into more involved sand crafting.

Mermaid Clara.

Elena with her fortress.

Elena only dipped in a few times with Christina, but Clara just LOVED going in the waves with her daddy.

We had a little picnic, and the girls carefully protected their food from the seagulls they were sure were lunch-snatchers.

PB&J cheers on the beach...this made all our work from the earlier part of this summer seem worth it!

Here we try flying the kite - our first kite was a little tricky, but then we went in and asked for the very most easy to fly kite there was, and we ended up with this one that went straight in the air and sailed beautifully.

We found a farmer's market the next day in Sandwich - we haven't been able to find a place to pick them ourselves (everyone says they are a week from being ready) but it was great to get them there, and we devoured them straight away.

Also in Sandwich we hit upon the Green Briar Nature Center and Jam kitchen - it was this fantastic nature conservancy and animal refuge, coupled with a kitchen begun by a friend of Fanny Farmer's, who says that the world "is in a jam, and needs preserving" and so made that her mission.

The girls said hello to Teddy, Eddy, and Peter bunnies.

Clara seems a bit wary, but we really enjoyed seeing the kitchen where tons and tons of jam have been made for so many years.

The woman who started the kitchen, Ida, invented this "sun cooking" method. We got sun cooked blueberries with Kirsch and put it over poundcake....it was delicious. Elena favored the Apple Pie Jam, and we had to get a jar of that, too.

Hydrangeas abound here - we just love their blossoms!

Little Clara in a tree - proud as can be.

Now she's being a monkey - ooh ooh, ah ah!

Elena tried to distract from her monkey sister by being a silly monkey herself - berry basket on head.

She took her turn at being a bold tree climber, too.

We took a little path down to the water, and we saw a swan and dragonflies and assorted other plants and wildlife. We tried to get a picture here of the girls and Kerrie, but Clara wasn't into it. Elena tries to tickle her into a good picture pose.

We had lunch at a tea shop in sandwich, then played in a grassy park nearby. We met this woman and a cat, who she said was very friendly and who indeed run to get pets from the girls. Sadly, this Miss Poula decided suddenly to bite Leni...it doesn't seem deep, and we're keeping neosporin on it, but it was a sad end to that interaction! Bad Miss Poula!

To bring us back up to a high note, we went to play at a park at a nearby school. That really cheered us all...until kids from the school came out (why are they in school in July??) and we had to "hide!" in our car so they wouldn't know we snuck on their playground.

When we got home, Hart showed the girls a stomp rocket he got them. The girls had disrobed a bit in the heat, so most of the pictures can't really be shown.

But we're going to go ahead and show this cute one - Hart is looking at the rocket Elena has stomped way up high in the air!

Kerrie brought out the fingerpaints, and that was some good indoor fun once it started raining.

Elena has a really interesting style - she used almost the entire pot of blue and of green finger paint in one setting- those pictures still aren't dry! Clara had a more moderate approach, and put a few dots here and there and then was off to her next project.

Steve went and got us lobster for dinner - it was a really delicious meal that also included scallops, corn on the cob, and an amazing beet salad. We kept offering the girls different foods, and they very politely tilted their heads and said "Maybe...not" or "Please, may I no?" They behaved really beautifully.

These last pictures are totally blurry, but also full of too many fun memories not to include.

In other news, the girls went to bed with no fuss for the first time in their big girl bed, and slept through the entire night and woke up happy!!! Hooray! That warranted a trip to Dunkin' Donuts in the morning for celebratory breakfast donuts...we are so proud of those girls.