Wildwood Trip

We took our first (only?) beach trip of the summer over the July 4th weekend. Jessica and Tim were nice enough to invite us to share their beach house in North Wildwood, which they were renting for the full week. This allowed us to take a long weekend beach trip, while still conserving our days off for Ireland. It also allowed Nolan to have a playmate on vacation - his cousin Mattie, who is a year and a half older. 

Cousins!

We drove down to Wildwood on the Saturday following the July 4th holiday (Friday this year), which was nice since it gave us a day to pack/prepare. On the way, we stopped in Newark, DE to drop off Deaner at his favorite stayaway place - Camp Bow Wow! It was a bit out of the way, but Dean loves it there and we can watch him play on their cameras :) After a quick lunch at Chipotle (Joe called it... wherever there is a college campus, there has to be a chipotle!), we drove the rest of the trip down to Wildwood and arrived by mid-afternoon.

Since we arrived before Jessica's family, we took a nice family walk along the sea wall. We spent the rest of the evening getting settled in the condo and had yummy boardwalk pizza!

The next day we hit the beach right after breakfast. We got there before the majority of the crowds, and had some room to spread out. It is amazing to see how much more Nolan enjoyed the beach this year vs last. He loved playing in the sand and running in the shallow water!

Nolan playing in the sand

content boy!

We spent some time at the pool in the afternoon (Nolan loved it!) and I cooked dinner for everyone that night. 

The next day, Tim and Jessica recommended we get to the boardwalk before 10am so that we could rent family bicycles for an hour before they close the boardwalk to bikes at 11am. We had such a blast! Nolan loved riding up front and didn't want the ride to end! It was a great way to see the entire boardwalk too - it is super long!

Nolan in our "buggy" - appropriately named Luke (Nolan's middle name is Lucas)

"Big Ben" buggy in front of the "Wildwoods" sign

Our clan

Sister/Brother and their kiddos

After our rental was over, we walked around the boardwalk and got some lunch before heading back for naptime.

On the boardwalk

Really nice boardwalk!

Someone's ready for naptime!

After naps, we had an early dinner and decided to go back down to the beach at sunset. The time was perfect for no crowds, the sun wasn't as hot, and good light for some photos!

Cousins playing together!

So much room to ourselves!

He's got a lot of digging to do!

Digging happily

Daddy to the rescue!

Break for boat watching

Mommy's turn!

Bubbles!

Peaceful spot with baby Mia

I don't think I will ever forget the happiness of running into the water with Nolan. You know how sometimes you are in the middle of something and you just think to yourself... this is one of those moments that I will always cherish for the rest of my life. This was one of those moments. There's no way you could look at the joy on this kid's face and not feel it too.

Running in circles around mommy and jumping/splashing in the water

Mommy and Daddy lifting him in and out of the water

Mattie getting in on the fun

But... even with all that fun, hands down, Nolan's favorite memory from this trip is flying the kite on the beach. He was in LOVE, and hasn't stopped talking about it since. All his teachers at school said he was telling them all about his kite :)

The way the beach is situated (below the walkway) the wind wouldn't keep the kite up high, it just just blow it around, but Nolan was fascinated with it regardless. I see a trip to the park on a windy day in our future soon.

Kite chasing

Sunsetting in the background

"I want to fly da KITE!"

Pure happiness

Love it.

Such an amazing ending to our last full day at Wildwood. I told Nolan to wave at his "Auntie Emily" and he said "Hi Emily!" and hugged me tight. What a special boy I have, and what a fun trip this was!