Vacations with Kids: Cape Cod

Red and cousin Scarlett head for the beach!

Who doesn't love the Cape?  Since we used to live in Massachusetts and my husband spent a couple of years living on Cape Cod, we kind of consider ourselves veterans in terms of vacationing there.

In the past, we've rented a house (we've stayed in Eastham, Hyannisport and Yarmouth in the past) and hunkered down for a week by ourselves and drove to a bunch of different towns.  This year we stayed in Yarmouth with my sister's family and my mother-in-law for a little less than a week.  Even with all the togetherness (5 adults and 4 kids in a 3 bedroom house!), I think it was a best trip yet!

First of all, if you've never been to Cape Cod and you're looking for a place to rent, may I suggest the Great Island Ocean Club in Yarmouth.  This is where we stayed.  You are literally steps from the beach.  In our case, we were about 2 houses away!  They also have a pool, tennis courts and a playground on the property.  Needless to say we spent a lot of time at the beach:

Everyone coming on to the beach.

Tom Thumb chasing Daddy!

Me and my sister Andrea

The kids are pretending they're lifeguards.

Out on the rocks...

A daddy son moment :-)

If you get tired of the beach, here are some other great spots to try:

Cape Cod Creamery - This is seriously the best ice cream on the Cape---and we've tried most of them! :-)  They make it themselves and they have all kinds of fun flavors named after different parts of Cape Cod.  The kids couldn't get enough of Marston Mills Mint Chip, while I became addicted to Corporation Beach --- a new addition to their menu that features chocolate ice cream with pretzels filled with peanut butter.  I literally got it both times we went there.  Sit in the Adirondack chairs out front and watch the tourists drive by!

The Lobster Boat - Cheapest place for lobster around!  I totally recommend the buy it at the fish market and cook it at the house method (if you go this way, there is a fish market right next door to this restaurant that is good), but if you'd rather have someone kill the lobsters for you this is the place to go.  If you're looking for a fancy pants atmosphere this is not it, but for $22 you can have two steamed lobsters, a baked potato, and an ear of corn.  Their chowder wasn't too shabby either.  If you want value for your money, it's The Lobster Boat.

The Sesuit Harbor Cafe - Want to do it like the locals?  Go here for the lobster roll.  It will be confusing getting in there.  It looks like a private boat marina and you have to get a parking pass to get in, but once you're in be prepared for the most yummy lobster roll around.  My sister and her hubby are big fans of the fried seafood there too.  My little sis recommends the fried scallops.

The Book Rack - Don't have an e-reader, but want a book quick at a reasonable price?  Hit The Book Rack.  It's in a strip mall on Route 28 and has nearly every genre used book you can imagine organized in an easy to find method.  I went in there looking for Half Broke Horses.  They didn't have it so I walked out with Bel Canto at half the list price.  That's their price methodology---half the price listed on the back of the book.  Easy peasy.  Is it as cheap as Amazon?  Maybe not depending on the book you choose, but you're paying a bit for convenience.  This is vacation, remember?

The one new thing we tried on this trip was a seal watch.  Unfortunately, we had to do it the unorthodox method because the waters were too rough the day we went.  Normally, you get on a bigger boat for a couple hours and they drive you around the perimeter of the island to see the seals.  We got the little boat instead.  They did give us a $10 a head discount for the inconvenience (normally it's $35 for adults and $30 for kids 12 and under).  They loaded us on to a glorified ski boat, dropped us on an island, and we walked to where the seals were beached.  We did get some great photos however and the kids were simply thrilled:

Here we are on "the little boat."  Tom Thumb thinks he's the captain!

 Here's Red---the seals are the black on the beach in the background.

 We were able to get a smidge closer to get some pictures.  Keep in mind that my camera is still zoomed all the way in.  We didn't want to scare them into jumping back in the water! 

Check out the cute baby seal in the foreground.

 Some of the younger seals were swimming right up to the beach to check us out!

Overall, despite the snafus with the water, a great experience.  Here's a link to the tour company we went with for the seal watch.  Just FYI --- you need to make advance reservations for this one.  

There's still time to head to the Cape before summer ends!  Ha ha!  Where are you going on your vacation this summer?

Vacations with Kids: Howe Caverns

Our family standing on the heart at the Bridal Altar inside Howe Caverns

I just got a comment today that said something to the effect of "Aren't you due for a blog post?"  Yes, I'm somewhat overdue, right? ;-)  We were off traveling in New England visiting the Cobbler's mommy and my sister's family for a week and a half.  Then, upon our return, I developed an inner ear infection.  Fun times...I'm still dealing with intermittent dizziness after a week and a half, but I'm well enough to write today.  There is such a thing as "ear rocks."  Who knew?


If you're planning any summer trips, I can make a few recommendations based on our recent excursion.  This time was our first visit to Howe Caverns.  Red has developed an interest in rocks over the last year so this side trip on our way to Massachusetts was a nod to her latest hobby.  Howe Caverns, which is located in Howe Caves, New York, was discovered in 1842 by Lester Howe.  Over the years the cavern, which lies about 15 stories below ground, was explored and later developed for tourists.  If you're looking for a natural cave tour in which you rough it and climb over rocks and squeeze through crevices, this tour is not for you.  If you want an easy walk on brick pathways in which you get to see rock formations up close and personal, then you'll like this tour.  


A variety of choices are available, but we opted for the Traditional Tour.  The Traditional Tour is about an hour and a half in length.  It included an easy group walking tour with a guide and a short boat ride inside the cavern.  There was some cheese factor involved---like a dated animatronic Lester Howe telling us about discovering the cavern at the beginning of the tour---but once you got down into the cave you really got to see some great formations.   The photos don't do them justice, but here are some shots of what we got to see:

This is a rock formation known as "The Chinese Pagoda"

"The Turtle"

The kids and I touching the one touchable formation in the cave.

Many of the formations were bathed in colorful lights so you could see the details.

The tour didn't come cheap.  It is $23 for adults, $12 for kids 5-11, but Tom Thumb at age 4 was still free.  They do offer a AAA discount which got us a couple of bucks off each ticket.  Even with the prices, we all agreed that it was well worth it for what you got to see.  Red even asked if we could go again next year.  One suggestion---bring jackets!  No matter what time of year it is or what the temperature is outside, the cavern is always in the mid-50s.  I was so glad we had sweatshirts.


A recent addition to the Howe Caverns campus is the Howe Caverns Mining Company.  Is it touristy? Yes.  Did the kids love it?  An emphatic YES.  What you do is you purchase a bag of
mining rough at the register inside and then the kids get to use a water sluice (essentially a stream of water running through a trough) to remove the dirt and clean the rocks.  We bought a 5 pound bag for $8 and the kids had a blast!  Here are some photos:

Red and Tom Thumb each ended up with a small bag of rough gemstones including amethyst, quartz, and fool's gold.  Well, worth the money for our little rock lovers.


Next time you're close to Albany or Syracuse, NY, consider a side trip over to Howe Caverns.    It comes highly recommended from our crew!  More blog posts coming in the days ahead!

Back from Florida and lots of reading!

We're back from a week in Florida at Grandma's house!  We had all kinds of plans to see all sorts of things, but really we just went swimming...

...and read lots of books.

There was some beach in there too.

The Cobbler and I decided to just let the kids run the show and swimming and going to the beach was all they wanted to do.  But isn't that what vacation is all about anyway?

I did a lot of sitting in the sun with a book in hand and ended up with two hits and one rotten tomato.   First, I read Never Let Me Go which was my book club's pick for February's meeting.

The book, set in the 1990s,  is about three friends who grow up living at a boarding school in England.  You meet the narrator, Kathy, at the beginning of the book and she introduces herself as someone who has the occupation of a "carer."  She then reminisces about her school days with her two friends Tommy and Ruth---the twists and turns in their relationships and where that has led the three of them to today.  I don't want to say too much about the plot because it will give away the element of surprise if you choose to read it.  Don't you dare go near an Amazon review or a movie website (it was made into a movie starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan in 2010) if you don't want it spoiled!  What I will say is that the book was paced great, the plot was teased out in a compelling way, and it has a medical ethics question that's left hanging at the end of the book.  I found the author's style to be refreshing because he doesn't spoon feed the reader.  For example, Kathy's narrative assumes that you already know what "a carer" is and other plot points are revealed in the same way---the characters assume that you, as the reader, already know what they're talking about.  You have to discover the truth for yourself.  In the end, this was not a vacation read.  I was left thinking about a lot of ethical questions which would have been great if I wasn't sunning myself and trying to have a good time.  Overall, it's a good read that I can recommend.

I wish I could burn the second book I read.  I gave my grandmother two books as her birthday gift --- The Three Weissmanns of Westport and I Still Dream About You.  What I knew about them was the first was supposed to be a modern take on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and the second came highly recommended by some of the folks in the 52 books in 52 weeks group.  My grandma's a fast reader and read The Three Weissmanns of Westport first.  She dubbed it "different," which in grandma language means it sucked.  My grandma tends to be a little...ahem...conservative about other races, religions, and sexual preferences.  She kept saying how the family was Jewish so I thought maybe that was her issue.  I decided to try reading it anyway.  It started out okay.  Instead of the Mr. Dashwood character dying, he left the mom for another woman from his office and then files for divorce.  The mother and the two daughters go down to a cousin's house on the coast in Connecticut to live while the divorce plays out.  The plot was initially quite a bit like Sense and Sensibility.  Instead of the death, you get a divorce.  Instead of an ankle sprain, you have a kayaking accident that the Marianne character needs saving from.  But then the author took it a little too far.  Let's put it this way --- Marianne doesn't get with Colonel Brandon.  Marianne, who was completely heterosexual up to this point, ends up with Willoughby's ex-wife.  It was completely out of left field, and I'm surprised my grandma wasn't ranting about the lesbians instead of the Jews.  Maybe she is getting more liberal in her old age?  This book could have been good, but in the end it doesn't even remotely come close to holding a candle to the original.

I gave the Cobbler The Hunger Games for his birthday again on the recommendation of the some of the folks in the 52 in 52 group.  He read it while we in Florida, and I started reading it on the way back on the plane.  I could not put it down!  This book is set in Panem, a country in the former United States, at some point in the near future.  In the beginning, Katniss Everdeen and her sister Prim are preparing for the annual reaping.  The reaping is a lottery in which one boy and one girl from each of the 12 districts of Panem are selected to take part in the Hunger Games--- an event when they are placed in an arena for a fight to the death with only one winner.  When Prim is selected as the female participant from District 12, Katniss offers herself up as her replacement.  This book moves at a break neck speed from start to finish.  There is violence, there are some yucky wound descriptions, there is the requisite love triangle, and there are some wild action sequences that I didn't anticipate.  Both the Cobbler and I enjoyed it.  There was one scene that we both found a bit far fetched, but it is set in the future so I suppose who knows what could happen!  I can't wait to see the movie (it comes out next month!) and read the other two books in the trilogy.

Much more has happened since we returned home, but that will have to wait for another day.

Happy reading!

Packing for zombies...

All I can say is thank goodness and oh crap that our vacation is starting tomorrow!  The sky is grey, the grass is a weird green brown color, and I've packed absolutely nothing.  I just want to crawl back into bed and wake up to the sound of the sprinklers in my grandma's back yard.  Don't you just wish that you could skip all the bag packing, line standing, plane flying, and kid whining and just get to the good stuff?  Speaking of the good stuff, the Cobbler has been on the rampage planning what he wants to do while we're visiting Grandma in Florida.  First is a trip up to Fort Myers to the Edison & Ford Winter Estates.   

The Cobbler has been dying for the kids to be old enough to be tolerant of looking at Ford memorabilia for a few hours.  They might just survive.  We visited there on our honeymoon in 2000 and I remember it being pretty interesting.  The other site he wants to check out is the Koreshan State Historic Site.  When he told me about it he said, "We should go to that place.  You know---the one that was once owned by the cult."  I had no idea what he was talking about, but then he finally admitted that he really wanted to go there because they have a machine shop somewhere on the property.  I knew there had to be an ulterior motive!  We also will have to hit the Naples Train Depot again.  The kids adore the model train exhibit and the small scale train that you can ride around the property.  Here we are at the train depot last year:

But really what I'm looking forward to most is making up some tasty bad for you food for the Super Bowl and smelling some of that salt at the beach.  I'm ready to get sandy!  Here's some photos from years past:

2006

 2006

 2007

 2007

 2008

2009

Tom Thumb with his Patriots balloon in 2008.

So are the Patriots going to win this time around or what?

Back from the Engine Show!

Even though I was under the weather (why did I get a cold in the summer???), we went up to northern Michigan to attend the Buckley Old Engine Show.  The kids and the Cobbler had a blast with my Dad and my older sister's family riding the train and checking out all the tractors last Friday.  The men decided they didn't get enough on Friday so they went back for round #2 on Saturday, while my mother and I took the kids to an art fair.  We followed that up with a trip to the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes.  There was a huge church camp group there the same time we were and they all decided to run down the dune together.  I had never seen anything like it!  Notice the people rolling down!

We did our tour of duty climbing the dunes too and the kids had a blast rolling and somersaulting down the dunes.  Here's me and my Daddy:

 The Cobbler and Tom Thumb

 Red in the tall grass

 Tom Thumb got tired of rolling.

It was nice to get some final rest and relaxation in before school starts in two weeks.  

In the meantime, I have my million bazillion projects that I have to finish:
1. Tom Thumb's airplane quilt.  His 4th birthday comes in for a landing on September 8th and I need to get a move on with that baby.
2. Christy's veil.  Yes, I'm a whack job and will be making my sister's veil for her wedding.  She and her fiance will be in town to get their marriage license over Labor Day weekend and I need to have it done for then.  Must sew.  Must sew.
3. Red's Model T dress.  Red finally outgrew her vintage looking dress that she wears when we tour in our Model T.  Have to have that one done for a 2nd weekend in September car festival.

4. Altering Tom Thumb's tux - I got his tuxedo for the wedding in the mail today (found an absolutely AMAZING deal on eBay) and I need to make adjustments to the shoulders of the jacket.  I curse you set in sleeves.  He does look pretty darn cute though.  

What are you doing with the rest of your summer?