July 4th

We started our July Fourth weekend with some fireworks.  Despite the drizzly weather, we went out to our "spot" to enjoy Medford's fireworks display:

The next morning, after we put our 10lbs of blueberries in the freezer for winter (minus enough to make a giant batch of pancakes), we packed up and went to the beach!

Dinner at Grummy and Pop Pop's:

Lunch at Grandmom Jackie and Pop Pop Pop's:

Beach time!!

Crash!

We did sparklers:

And we took a bike ride up to Barnegat Lighthouse!

The four of us climbed up Old Barney - Clare motored up the stairs like a case of Pirates Booty was waiting for her at the top.  Sean took his time coming up the stairs, being very careful on the 217 steps...

TJ got me a Birch Beer when we stopped for refreshments (can't visit Barnegat Lighthouse without a Birch Beer!)

Grummy, Thom John and the trailer

After the bike ride, it was back to the beach!

Thanks to the recent round of beach replenishment, the beach is full of neat shells, including lots and lots of sand dollars!

The kids are total water-babies this summer.  I hope to get pictures or video of them boogie boarding later this summer.  They waded into water together and we could see them trying to decide if they were going out to the sandbar or not - they didn't!

And another passed out baby after the beach:

Tall Ships

The Tall Ships came to Philadelphia and Camden at the end of June.  We started out by parking at Rutgers in Camden and then walking over the Ben Franklin Bridge to the Philly side to see what we could see.  The kids stayed awake for this trip over the bridge - unlike last time :-)

The first ship we saw was the USCGC Eagle - the same ship that Pop Pop learned on when he was coming up in the Coast Guard Academy!  The kids were very excited to see this ship.  They were actually pretty good while we waited in line and posed for lots of pictures...

Finally on the Eagle:

We toured a couple more ships before walking down the pier to go see L'Hermione.  On the way, we watched this ship set sail for home - Portugal!

We found a junior rubber ducky - much smaller than the seven-story rubber ducky that we were promised (it kept blowing over, so the organizers took the big ducky down).

We did make it to L'Hermione but it was closed for a private cocktail party!  Gee whiz!

So, we walked back up the pier and sought out the River Link Ferry to go back to Camden but the line was about 10 miles long!  So we decided we would walk back over the bridge but first we stopped at a cafe on Race Street for refreshment.

Clare rested:

Clare perked up on the walk back over the bridge and both kids spent the last part of the walk giving me 20,000 heart attacks by running around on the bridge like crazy people!

And to cap off our Philly day, we stopped at Wawa for hoooagies for dinner :-)