Cape Cod 2024.

The kids were supposed to finish school around June 13th, so I reserved a Cape house beginning on the 17th. And then with every snow day they called during the winter months, I cringed a little on the inside knowing we were getting dangerously close to the June make-up snow days interfering with our Cape trip. 🙂 And then it happened, the last day of school was scheduled for: June 17th. Whomp. Whomp.

So basically the kids got off the school bus, climbed into the packed (and I do mean… packed) car and we drove to our first vacation of the summer! Once we unpacked the packed car and assessed what everyone wanted to do, it was clear: BEACH. So we drove down to the nearest beach and enjoyed a very windy afternoon at the beach.

We got back to the house, the kids took showers in the outdoor shower — it’s truly so exciting for them! And we ordered some dinner (pizza), then went for ice cream (of course!) and let the kids stay up until “whenever they wanted” — to be honest, at 9:45PM I called it bedtime. 🙂

The next morning, we got ready and headed into Hyannis center. We walked around, the kids got to pick something from a toy store (thanks to Barb… surely not us, ha!), and we made it to the water.

We got Mexican food for lunch at Anejo which Sean and I discovered when we were down the Cape last summer. It’s a neat restaurant where you sit under a giant (and I do mean giant) tree.

After lunch, we got ready for beach #2! This time we drove about 15 minutes away to Mass Audubon Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary. This is a beach we found a few years ago and fell in love with! It was just as good as we remembered. The water is calm, there’s a lot to find (crabs, horseshoe crabs, shells), there’s no one there, and you can walk for miles and miles. It’s perfect for the kids. Even Walker enjoyed it! (He didn’t love the beach the day before because it was way too windy.)

When they all got their fill of sand, water, and sun — well, let’s say when Walker had his fill — we headed home, for more outdoor showers, take-out for dinner, ice cream (again!), a little walk to the beach, and a non-existent bedtime. Yikes!

Funny story, the girls wanted to walk down to the beach for the sunset — until we got there and they realized that meant it would get dark and we’d be out of the house! They wanted to quickly turn around, ha! Javi stayed at the house with Barb (said he needed a break from us… *eye roll*) — and a stranger, who was at the beach practicing his juggling moves, offered to take our photo.

In the morning, we got a slow start and ended up at… mini-golf! Mini-golf turned into go-karts as well, because, well — when in Rome. Thankfully, we managed to walk away without a visit to the arcade. I didn’t get photos of the go-karts because I gave Eva my phone to take our photo while I was driving — and she took over 300 photos of our feet.

Sean won at mini-golf by one point (!) but I’m going to say we tied because I had Walker in the ergo the entire time and had to mini-golf with one hand, holding an 18 lb. baby… in a heat wave! In the afternoon, we relaxed at the house until the kids got restless and we then we went to dinner, and ice cream… again!

We intentionally went to dinner at 4:45 so that we could make it back to the beach! The kids had so much fun digging and building, running and splashing, cartwheeling and hand standing, searching and finding — and of course, posing for photos. 🙂

We’ll just say they went to bed (nearly) on time and slept the whole night. In fact, we were supposed to leave first thing in the morning so Sean could get home for a 9:30 meeting and at 7AM, they were all (and I do mean all) still sleeping!

It was such a fun three days and exactly the right amount of time. It was a little stressful, a lot of chaos, and a bit uncomfortable — as vacations with kids tend to be. But it’s not lost on me that our last Cape trip was last August — just me and Sean. We planned the trip as a little “due date escape” to get my mind off the due date for the baby we lost. At that point, I was newly pregnant, again, and spent the whole weekend pretty anxious about the pregnancy. I was sure it wasn’t going to end up the way it should. And now, 10 months later — he’s here, snoozing in the Cape. 🙂