Our Road Trip to the Beach!

Lately C has been begging to go to the beach.  Now there are lots of perks to living here in upstate NY, but being close to a beach is just not one of them, so after a lot of debate and research and going back and forth and what not we decided we were going to surprise the girls with a road trip to Cape Cod.  Hyannis to be exact.  Sure it's a bit further away than some of the other beaches we were looking at, but we knew a) that the beaches are clean, b) the water would be warm with small/no waves and c) that the Cape was open for business rather than still being mostly closed due to Sandy.

So we packed up the girls and set off.  

We made a random bathroom stop at a mall that was about 5 minutes from our final destination, but hey it worked out, because there was a carousel there!  Another thing that C has been asking to do!  

I think she liked

I think A liked it too :) She just kept saying up, down, up, down...
 

We ended up picking Veteran's Memorial Beach to go to since they had a picnic area, however once C saw there was a beach nothing else mattered, she just wanted to be down at the ocean.  So a super quick lunch for Mommy and Daddy, a quick change into swim suits and we were down in the water.

Some awesome things about this beach... 1) NO waves.  Now some people may say, "Ocean with no waves?  What's the point?" but to that I say "I've got kids and it's great not worrying about them getting sucked away by the tide." 2) Shallow waters, the water only got about waist deep in the swimming portion. 3) WARM water, seriously this water was just beautiful, I could (and did) just sit in it for hours.  

I am pretty sure that Hyannis is going to be a place we come to every year, at least once a year, even if it's just for a couple hours.  It's nice to have a place where we can all go to recharge (even if it takes half the day to get there and back lol).

 

Already we are making plans to bring the camper down in the off season so we can do some more exploring. 

Games We Play ~ Cooperative Games

I didn't really think that there would be a type of game that I enjoyed playing more than dice games, but that was before I started playing cooperative games.  These things are awesome! Instead of playing against the other player(s)  you are playing together against the game itself.  Love it. 

First cooperative game we got was Pandemic. The object of the game is to cure and eradicate the four diseases before they take over the world.  Each player has a special power that will help you along the way, but then again the game is working against you.  As I said above, there is one way to win the game - you must cure and eradicate all four of the diseases.  But to *lose* the game, maybe you run out of disease cubes of any given color, or you draw one too many epidemic cards and the epidemic rate goes off the scale, or if we reach too many infections and the infection rate goes off the scale.  Toward the end of the game things can get a little stressful lol.

The only complaint I have about this game is the make over the second edition got.  The little plastic disease cubes are cool and all, but the colors on the blue and black disease cards look just about identical...not cool...Also the color on a couple of the pawns is a bit close so it can get confusing sometimes if those two pawns are in play.  

You can see the game in play on TableTop here .

 

The second cooperative game we have is called Forbidden Island.  After we got Pandemic I really wanted to get another cooperative game and this is what we ended up deciding on.  This one is a bit more straight forward and a bit quicker of a game to play.  The object of the game is to collect all of the relics before the island sinks.  Once again there is one way to win the game but several ways to loose it...if Fools Landing (the helicopter pad) sinks, you have no way off the island and you loose, if all of the pathways leading to fools landing sinks, you have no way off the island and you loose, if the water level rises too high...you loose.  Also as with Pandemic each character gets special abilities to give the players a fighting chance against the island. 

Love this game, the relic pieces and cards are sturdy and the art work on the cards are really beautiful, no complaints here. 

See the game being played on TableTop here. 

I'm now addicted to these types of games.  We have only played these games with two players, I'm sure it would greatly change the dynamic of the game playing with more people, but it works great with just two.  It's fun to be bouncing ideas off each other and working together to get to a common goal.  We will definitely be getting more of these types of games to play!

Updating the List

Updating and editing our summer list a bit.  Taking off some items that the girls need to be a bit older to enjoy with us and things that apparently are just *way* out of our budget range at the moment (~cough~Zoom Flume~cough~) and added a couple others that I think will be fun!!

~ Go to the Ocean
~ Freeze and Free Toys in an Ice Block
~ Explore Spring/Summer at the  Pine Bush Discovery Center
~ Ride the carousel at the State Museum
~ Make a Rain Gauge to Measure Rain

DONE!

~ Make a Fairy Garden
~ Make S'mores
~ Have a Front Yard Camp Fire
~ Have a Super Fun Super Hero Family Photo Shoot
~ Have a Picnic
~ Go to Free Comic Book Day
~ Go Camping
~ Put up a Clothes Line
~ Go to the Drive-In
~ Have a Squirt Gun Fight
~ Plant Our Garden
~ Make Ice Cube boats
~ Race Soap Boats
~ Make Sidewalk Chalk Paint
~ Stargaze with the Telescope...Show the Girls the Moon Up Close!
~ Go Geocaching

Geocaching ~ Summer Bucket List

A couple weeks ago, we decided to get out of the house and playing in nature for a while.  There are a couple of Earth Caches in a preserve that isn't to far from us (one that we had no idea existed before geocaching lol).

An earth cache is different from a traditional cache in that you aren't looking for a hidden box filled with stuff but you are looking for a specific piece of earth, or something pertaining directly to mother nature.  I LOVE these types of caches.

The first cache we went in search of was a ruler in the middle of the creek.  To claim a find for this cache you were supposed to observe how high the water level was take a pic and post it on the cache page.  Well...as you can see, it seems the recent massive rains and flash floods took the ruler for a ride.  Still, it makes for a more interesting pic even if we couldn't find out how high the creak actually was.

The next cache we went in search of was more interesting by far (though if the ruler had been in place it would have been neat to take the girls back during a dry spell to physically see the difference in the creek level...)

To claim credit for this next cache we had to find (and photograph) some fossils and observe (and photograph) the different types of rocks in the creek.  I was pretty amazed at the number of fossils that were out here, I guess the girls were a bit young to understand the significance of the fossils, but it will be neat to bring them back there in the future.  We brought a couple specimens home with us, but we left most of what we found exactly where we found them.  And the different rock formations down here are just awesome to look at, its just amazing to think of the glaciers moving over the earth and making everything we see today.

All in all it was a good day, though I think we adults got more out of it than the girls did at this point.  Still it was fun to get out and explore.  Plus the girls got to see some fish and collect some new rocks, even if they did have hot a melt down all the way back to the car.

Also as a side note, C is becoming quite the little cacher, she saw some PVC pipe attached to a tree and pointed it out saying "Look!  I found the treasure!" and yes there are quite a few caches out there that are PVC pipes disguised as tree branches.  These, however, are something else, not quite sure what though.

Can't wait for the weather to cool down a bit so we can get out again!!