6/28/19 Gray’s Beach/Bass Hole, Take 2

From the relaxing look of this picture, you would never know the morning we had.  Friday morning I braved the drive and dragging my kids with me, and drove to a grocery store 30 minutes away that has more reasonable prices, and while it saved me a lot of money, I deserved a medal not for that, but for enduring it with my kids. They were seriously naughty! They have this inability to walk through a store without wrestling/ choke holding one another. Grrrrr. It’s so tiresome to try to discipline them, and deal with it while trying to shop, and so embarrassing to have people either give me the look of “shame on you,control your kids,” or “shame on you for letting your kids be so wild,” and so on and soforth. It was a loooong morning.

After that I needed some time to relax, and Nate was able to get off work a little early, so we all headed to the beach.  The boys begged to go back to Bass Hole.  They love the water and the diversity of sea life there, and I love how safe the water is most times there.  It’s easy to let my kids swim and playand not worry about too many currents or deep water.

You’d never know how much these two fight.  At the beach they get along so well, helping one another, sharing, playing so well together.  It’s our happy place!

The kids enjoyed using their cousin’s kayak, especially Cooper.

We parked our beach stuff out on one of the sand bars during low tide.  The diversity of the beaches at low vs. high tide here is pretty amazing.

It wouldn’t be long before all that sand would beunder water during high tide.

Nate went off fishing for awhile. He’s the one in the light blue shirt.

Such a beautiful place, and the weather was PERFECT!

Hudson loves swimming around in the water to find all kinds of crabs and shrimp.

He started with a few...

And it wasn’t long before his bucket looked like this! I think he caught quite a few hermit crabs!

6/26/19 Newburyport: Going Back to Our Roots

For a few years now I’ve been wanting to take a trip to St. Mary’s Cemetery in Newburyport, MA to gather and search for some missing family history information for Nathan’s side of the family. His Grandpa Gunning’s mother, Marion Corey Gunning, and her side of the family came from Ireland to Newburyport.  Many of them are buried there, especially in one cemetery. 

Wednesday Denise and I took the boys and made the 2-1/2 hour drive from the Cape to Newburyport to see what we could find.  As we drove into the cemetery I was skeptical whether we’d find anything at all; it was a lot bigger than I thought!  But we started looking from the car, and within a few minutes found 4 family stones all in a row.  As soon as I saw them, I recalled Grandpa telling me years ago that they were all 4 together ina row.  It was a beautiful spot right next to two giant evergreen trees.  I won’t bore you with the personal details, but I know these people well from all the hours of research I’ve done, and it was so touching to finally see their headstones in person!  

Denise was so excited to find her ancestors, one of which (James Patrick Corey and Anne (McGlone) Corey) was her 2nd great grandfather and grandmother, and another (Anne Scully McGlone) her 3rd great grandmother.  We were so excited to keep finding graves that we completelyforgot to take any pictures of ourselves or the kids there, which I REALLY regret.

Denise and I split up to canvas the cemetery for other graves, and the boys ran around like crazy hooligans.  Denise found another very exciting and informative Corey family plot!

And just as we were about to give up the search,we drove around in one last ditch effort and spotted another.

It was exciting every time we found one.  We were so giddy!  After the cemetery adventure, we found some homemade ice cream at Hodgie’s.

I was excited to find pink bubblegum ice cream WITHOUT the gum pieces—that’s so rare!

After gorging ourselves on ice cream, we drove around old Newburyport, looking at the historic homes, trying to catch a glimpse of the harbor, and imagining what life may have been like inthe 1800s in this little town that used to be a bustling textile and shoe factory town.

We even drove passed a few addresses from oldcensus information to see where various relatives had lived. Some of the houses weren’t there any more, but on Spring Street we did see the townhome where Denise’s great Aunt Catherine (Corey) Page lived when Denise was a young girl.  (Driving the narrow streets, following a GPS, and dealing with kids was about all I could handle,

so we regrettably have no pictures of any of the houses either.)

We would have loved to have stayed in Newburyport many more hours to explore the little shops,

visit more sites, and even explore more cemeteries, but we needed to head home.  We got caught in rush hour evening traffic and it took over 3 hours to get home. It was a long, but successful adventure!

6/27/19 Basements and Beach

Thursday we spent most of the day cleaning outGrandpa and Denise’s basements and hauling stuff to donate.  The morning was too chilly to go to the beach, so it was a good way to spend the day.  Later that afternoon Nate was able to join us, and we went to Cold Storage Beach for a few hours.  The kids kept busy trying out their new raft, Nate went fishing from the jetty, and I sat and watched the kids.  Great way to end a day of lots of hard work.

6/25/19 Bike Ride—Dennis to Yarmouth

Tuesday was another overcast day, too chilly for the beach, but perfect for a bike ride. So we hopped on our bikes and rode a part of the Cape Cod Rail Trail that we haven’t before—Dennis to Yarmouth.

I wasn’t sure how far we’d go, and left it up to Hudson to tell me when he’d had enough.  It’s definitely more of a quiet part of the trail with not as much Ike or foot traffic, but also not as much to see along the way.  Still beautiful though!

Hudson was such a trooper. We ended up bikingabout 5-6 miles from 134 in Dennis to Station Ave in Yarmouth, and stopped near the bridge over the Bass River to have a picnic lunch.

Tuesday night we went to Denise’s house for dinner—so delicious!—and watched some of the Red Sox game too. It was raining, but a good night to stay in.

6/24/19 Favorite Things, Favorite Places

On our way home from the lighthouse we took the scenic route down 6A instead of going on thehighway. Stopped at a little beach shop where Cooper and Hudson purchased themselves a rubber raft, which I’m sure will be in many future pictures.  We stopped at Christmas Tree Shop just because there’s ALWAYS stuff to buy there (those not familiar with that store, it’s not a holiday store—lots of home decor and seasonal stuff and... all the things at great prices).  As we drove through the town of Brewster, I spotted the Brewster Store, and quickly pulled into a parking spot to surprise the kids, who weren’t paying attention. It was facing a bed and breakfast, and they wondered why we had stopped there. I told them I thought it looked like such a cute little house thatI decided to just stop and go see who lived thereand find out about their cute house.  You should have seen their faces!!! It was SO FUNNY! And then they started whining about why did we haveto do that, and that would be weird, and... then Isaid, “Guys—I’m kidding! We’re at the Brewster Store! Let’s go get some ice cream and look at fun stuff in the store.” They were surprised and excited and very relieved that we weren’t going toinvite ourselves over to some stranger’s cute house. LOL!

Cooper chose double chocolate ice cream, and it melted EVERYWHERE! He was covered from head (face and EAR?!) to foot. It was pretty gross,but also funny.  Hudson ordered cookies and cream, which was weird for him, because he usually orders plain vanilla.  I, of course, ordered bubblegum. That is one of my most favorite flavors, minus the gum pieces in it.

Continuing our journey home, we stopped to play at the herring run at Stony Brook.  Oh how I love this little oasis!

I usually let the kids dip their feet in the water, but this time I just let them go all out and get as wet as they wanted. They were so excited. It was fun to watch them explore and have fun without so many limits.

Someone had put a little painted rocks hidden all around the park. It was fun to find them and read their little messages, and Cooper was excited to find one in the stream.

I thought this one near these beautiful little flowers was pretty cute.

The beauty of this place takes my breath away!

This hawk showed up in a nearby tree.  It was hunting something on the ground, and was so focused that it didn’t really notice us.

It flew to a nearby fence rail.  Such a big hawk!

Cooper wanted to see how close he could get before it flew away.  He ended up even closer than this—about 5 feet from it.  It looked right at him, and I was worried it would fly at him and try to defend itself. Thankfully it flew away. Crazy Coop!

Hudson wasn’t as interested in the hawk as he was in his temporary pet roly-poly he named “Rolly.”

Nate joined us after a bit, and we enjoyed hanging out in the solitude, listening to the birds and the stream and the kids having fun.

That night we went to dinner at Clancy’s with Grandpa and Uncle David.  After clam chowder, and dinner, and sampling David’s mussels, I’m not sure how this kid still had room for dessert!

6/24/19 Truro Highland Light

Monday we drove out nearly to the tip of Cape Cod to the town of Truro to see the Highland Light. I’ve been waiting for years for Hudson to be tall enough to be allowed to climb the steps/ladders to the top.

We stopped at a cute local place called Sweet and Savory to eat lunch. The boys ordered pizza and I got a tuna sandwich.  Once again Hudson decided my lunch looked better, and stole my sandwich. That boy! ;)

We toured the Highland House Museum first.  The kids, especially Hudson, had fun competing a scavenger hunt while we made our way through the museum.  It was interesting to see a room about the many shipwrecks near there, and someartifacts recovered from the sunken ships, or that were washed ashore.  There were exhibits about the old local fishing community, including oneabout fishnet fashion (clothes—more than fishnet stockings) that came from there. The kids liked seeing the children’s bedrooms, and many old tools and household items.  For completing the scavenger hunt they were given free button pins, which Cooper quickly pinned proudly to his backpack.

We were excited to tour the lighthouse next, but so utterly disappointed as we went to pay, and the lady said Hudson was too short. We measured and he was about 1/4” shy of their 48” tall sign, which was strange because he was able to ride things at Disney World in April that required 48” height. She refused to sell him a ticket to climb the lighthouse.  I’m “sure” that 1/4” would have made a difference of whether he would be able to climb the stairs. I was so mad and frustrated, and the boys were sure disappointed. Next year it will be under renovation. Booooo!  Serious thumbs down.  We walked out to the lookout point where the lighthouse used to be, but had to me moved due to natural erosion of the sandy cliff.  That’s the open Atlantic—so beautiful!

We still had fun, even if that lady made us mad-sad.

It’s so kind when someone offers to take a picture for you! Of course I said yes, please.

Then she suddenly said, “Ok silly faces!” Her 15 yr old daughter was not prepared for me to participate, I guess, because as soon as I pulled this face, she was surprised into laughter.  I said, “Didn’t expect that, did you?” She said that no, shedidn’t. Ha!