I'm back from yet another blogging hiatus, though this one was very intentional. I was at the beach with my family for a week, and I tried my hardest to unplug.



I packed my laptop, but basically never opened it.

I peeked at Twitter a handful of times, and posted a couple of photos on Instagram, but other than that, I wanted nothing to do with technology.

It was glorious to get away. I need to unplug like that more often.

The beach itself was great! I had a fun time hanging out with my family and all my cousins and their kids. I only took a handful of pictures (that whole not paying attention to technology thing), but luckily my cousin Laura took some great pictures, so I've borrowed some of those for this post!

I got to Rehoboth early Saturday morning, grabbed breakfast and set up camp on the beach to dive into my first book of the week. (I read six total all week, I'll save the recaps for a separate post.)



Saturday was very low-key with everyone trickling in to town at different times. My parents showed up not long after me and my brother and his girlfriend got stuck in awful traffic and got there a bit later.

My aunt and cousins were staying in a house a few blocks over from ours so we went to visit them Saturday night. They had an awesome porch, and we spent a lot of evenings this week hanging out there.

The rest of the week was filled with days lounging at the beach and reading more books or playing with the kiddos. Abby was not really digging the ocean, but Johnny and the twins loved it!

On Sunday I tried to take Abby to the water's edge to see the dolphins, but she kept insisting we not get too close to the water. After some persuading I managed to get her to put her toes in the water.



I also spent some time burying the kids in the sand and digging holes for them to jump into.

We did a grown-up "kids" dinner on Sunday night while my aunt and parents babysat the little kids. I wanted to get a picture of all of us together, but uhh completely forgot. Such a fail.



We also did dinner as a group Monday night. My brother's girlfriend made fabulous lasagna for the group (because she's a saint), and my cousin whipped me up the most delicious drink ever for me. He named it "The Jess" and it was some combo of orange and pineapple juices, Malibu rum, ginger beer and some other stuff. Sadly I will probably never be able to recreate it.





Other highlights of the trip included:

Seeing a whale in the ocean! We see dolphins almost every day, but we've never seen a whale! It was huuuuge and kept coming out of the water and puffing air before diving back down.

The fighter jet flyover we got on Friday. The jets must have taken off from Dover AFB and were cruising right over the beach. They put on a quick show for us doing some flips and barrel rolls before heading on their way.

The Air Force rock band playing downtown on Friday night. The lead singer had the most amazing voice ever. In fact she was a contestant on American Idol before leaving the show to join the Air Force. Needless to say the hour long concert was amazing.



The twins can say my name...ok well...sort of. J is a really hard sound for little kids, so Jess sounds more likes yesssss. But it's pretty awesome! (Ok seriously this is obviously the best part of the whole trip!)



And now I'm back home, curled up on my sofa, not quite ready to face the reality of what my work inbox will look like tomorrow morning. Why do vacations always end so quickly?