June 20-22, 2011 West Yarmouth, MA
This was the first time any of the children had ever seen the ocean. We had been really looking forward to sharing this with them.
Sydney loved it right away and could not wait to head off down the beach in search of treasure (seashells). She loved jumping headlong into the waves. She took right to the beach.
The boys. Not so much.
Brock was excited at first. And when he realized the water moved, he didn't like it quite as much. I think he thought it was chasing him. He really liked the mud, though.
Braden. Well. Braden didn't even like the sand because he thought every piece of...anything in the sand- tall grass, seaweed, rock, you name it, was something (bug, snake, spider, etc) that was going to get him. He totally freaked out. Made us carry him, refused to move his feet. It was like they were glued to the spot where he was standing. Funny at first, then it got kind of annoying. That lasted the first two days, and finally by the third day he was a little more at ease and would at least walk.
I think Braden was still reeling from the transition of the move though because he is the one that struggles with transitions. This trip may have been a little too soon for him to feel completely comfortable no matter where we had gone. He hadn't seen Tony in over a week and was in a completely new environment. That's a lot for him.
We also drove down the Cape to a lighthouse. I don't really remember what it was called. I'll post some pix. Went to the beach down there, but we were unprepared and hadn't brought our swim gear. Oh well, the kids just changed clothes. Hey, we aren't professional beach people yet. Neither of us has ever lived anywhere near a beach.
We thought about taking the ferry over to Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket for the day, but then Tony realized we had never taken the boys on a boat before and a four hour round trip cruise is probably not the best way to introduce them to boats.
That was a very good thought.
We found a one hour harbor cruise that takes you across to Hyannis Port. We thought that sounded like a safer more reasonable alternative for our first boat outing.
I have a picture on FB of Braden in timeout on the boat. It didn't go so well. There was a lecture about what we were seeing and we had to excuse ourselves and go below where there were no people because our children were acting like hooligans. That's okay because it was pretty cold anyway. And it was raining.
We enjoyed Cape Cod. Mainly stayed at our resort. Played miniature golf, swam in the pool, spent a lot of time of the beach, played on the playground, had picnics where we had to defend our food and family from dive-bombing seagulls, and had great quality family time.
