Vacations are funny

This is the perfect kind of house for this kind of family vacation. Each couple has their own bedroom and bath. For some reason, Dave and I were given the largest! and I love it. There's a spare room with pyramid bunk beds, but no one is really using that much. Still, it's handy to have. We have a private pool and hot tub, and Dave and the kids, Maddox, 4, and Lily, 11, have been in it for an hour or two this morning. Dave's sister, husband, and niece, are off at a local art show. His mom is lying down, I think. I am blogging and doing a bit of work here and there, as needed.

And that's how it goes. We don't have to move as a pack, although we are a small enough group that we like to. I go to bed most nights around midnight (I watch Buffy on my laptop and Dave watches Six Feet Under on the DVD in our room) after reading a bit. The sun rises around 6:30am but the curtains are thick and heavy and block it all out -- I feel like Buffy throwing back the curtains at the end of season three and almost burning up Angel -- and Dave and I wake up around 8, usually. I make my way upstairs and make a cup of tea, and look out at the horizon, which stretches far in all directions. People gradually make their way up and we make breakfast and chat quietly. I love this time the best.

The mornings are spent hanging around the house and the pool, or going to the ocean or the sound -- we have both a newborn and a senior, so we stay close to home most of the time -- and then we all eat lunch and either nap or swim or whatever. We've gone back out to swim in the afternoon, or for a bike ride, and then someone does a little grocery shopping and starts dinner. After dinner, whoever didn't cook, cleans up. We've played games -- last night was a mediocre round of Settlers of Catan -- and Wii and watched TV, and talked, and hung. We're all pretty zonked at night. I am spending entirely too much time on the computer, but hey, it's my vacation too, right?

And the food we're making is great! After the first night, when everyone got in late and ordered pizza, and the second, when we went out for what was seafood for most of us, we've each taken a night to cook. Sarah made spaghetti, salad, and garlic toast. Lisa and Wes made burgers and pigs in a blanket and salad. Dave and I made rice and beans and burrito fixings. He made his excellent cilantro pesto that wowed everybody. Here's the recipe:

Cilantro pesto, per Dave

1 bunch of fresh cilantro
Olive oil as needed, probably not more than a half a cup
Juice of one lime
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove

Clean the cilantro and chop off the stems -- just use the leaves. Put it and all the rest of the ingredients into the food processor. Buzz until liquid. Use for tacos, burritos, or put in chili. This freezes well if you put it into ice cube trays.

Vacation brake job

So we're in the Outer Banks -- no, I think we're in Cape Hatteras, south of the Outer Banks. Waves were huge yesterday so we went to the sound today. But among our party is a newborn, well, two months, so we aren't doing much beaching. Just in short spurts. We are us three, Dave's mom, niece/two sons/husband who just left, unfortunately, and his sister and her husband. We were supposed to include his nephew and girlfriend but he had to work, the bum.

The weather is just outstanding, warm, clear blue, mostly cloudless skies. We have one of those big family reunion rentals and it's really great for these kinds of vacations, although it sure sucks up resources. This things are huge, with tons of bedrooms, each with a king-sized bed and private bath, a game room, a media room, pool, hot tub, decks all around -- you know the deal. The top floor is mostly a kitchen/dining/eating combo. Every room has a TV and DVD, unfortunately, but I've finally figured out how to plug in my iPod, and we're listening to my Hawaiian mix. Nice.

We took two days to get here; that's the other drag: It's very far. We went to visit my friend Mary at her new home on the Eastern Shore on the Delmarva Peninsula (Cambridge), and picked up her daughter at the Bridgeport ferry on the way, where she was coming back from visiting her grandmother on Long Island.

We went out to dinner at Snappers that night, sitting on the deck next to the creek and eating broiled crab and french fries, and drinking endless iced teas with her friends Anne, Terry, and Little John. Lovely! Really nice evening, and we laughed a lot. Anne has been renovating her lovely old home nearby and she had just that very day finished her bedroom. It was incredibly stunning, and you can see what the rest of the place is going to look like when she gets done.

And the next day we hung out, visited, had a great morning, got in the car, stopped for gas--and Dave found a nail in the tire. Okay, no biggie, look, there's Mr. Tire, let's get it fixed. I almost drove past the place and swerved to take the turn. Better safe than sorry, right? A thousand dollars--no, I lie, it was only $990--and four hours later, we finally left Cambridge for our beach rental. It's a looooong drive, I gotta tell you. Our second day in the car, having dropped a lot of money on a brake job we were hoping was necessary and wasn't a rip-off (but what can you do, truly?) we were not in the mood to be driving. Still, traffic wasn't bad, and the rest of the family only beat us by a couple of hours. We got in a little after ten.

And oh, it's worth it. They had pizza waiting, which we devoured, and then all took a splash in the pool at hot tub for an hour, everyone making it to bed around midnight. The next day, yesterday, Sunday, we all slept in a bit, even Lily, and late in the morning we all went to the ocean for an hour or two. It's right across the street and over a small dune. But the waves were enormous and there's no lifeguard this summer, presumably because of budget cuts. Signs all over warn you about rip tides. These waves were crashing really big. We were standing in the foamy white water and you could feel the strong tug of the wave, pulling you back out.

We weren't there long when several emergency vehicles drove down the beach, first a truck pulling a jet ski, then a couple of ambulances. None of us went out very far; no one went into the actual waves. They were really, really big, everyone thought so. We left pretty soon, partly because we had the baby. Dave saw the authorities raising a red flag as he left, indicating a ban on swimming. Later I read that a man had drowned, but that was the weekend before at a different island.

Then we all went home and had a nap. Lovely! We ate out last night, and everyone went to bed early. It's a funny life, this family vacation resort home thingy. It's nice, really. Nice to see everyone, nice to be in such pretty surroundings. Today we went to the sound, which doesn't seem to get more than five feet deep for a half a mile. Maybe not that much, but a long way. Again we didn't stay long. The routine seems to be that we swim a bit, spell Sarah with the baby, and then come back, wash off the sand and salt in the outdoor shower, and jump in the pool for a bit.

Tonight we had spaghetti and garlic bread and salad. If we can stay awake we might play a rousing round of Settlers of Catan (best board game, ever!). Or we might just go to bed. Next the three of us are off to family camp, another really fun time, completely different--three-sided cabins, sleeping bags, outhouses, mountains and a lake. So we'll drive home Friday-Saturday, do laundry, repack, and head north. Phew. Hard work, all this vacationing.