Vacations

[Guest guest]

We just returned from a nine day trip to the beach in Fenwick Island,

Delaware (which isn't an island, but I'm tired of explaining why they call it

that!).

Grace loved every minute of it and didn't want to leave. She had big tears

on the day we left to come home. She's my list maker and planner, based on

what we've done at the beach in the past. She did start driving me nuts

when she kept asking if we were going to the boardwalk on this night and

playing miniature golf on the next night, just to be sure, but she asked me

about every five minutes.

We rented a townhouse from her band teacher at school. Grace loved it

because it was two floors and not your typical beach condo. She got to

sleep on a sleeper sofa and watch tv till 11 pm a few nights when extra

family came down.

She played about 50 games of skeeball on the boardwalk trying to win a

stuffed animal worth about 0.25. Cost me $15 in quarters for her to play,

but she was determined.

She did a lot of hand flapping on the beach, but mostly I think it was from

excitement. We just kept refocusing her and got her to play on the floats in

the ocean in stead of just wandering around kicking the waves and flapping.

I did spot a license plate from Pennsylvania while we were driving north on

Route 1 into Rehobeth Beach, Delaware that said QR AUTSM. Is this anyone on

the list?

Now school is starting and then we are gearing up for a long labor day

weekend in New York for a wedding and staying in a hotel. She is so excited

about the whole hotel thing, tv in front of the bed and canned soft drinks

from a machine and snacky foods too.

I guess I found that to make the vacation thing work, we try to keep some

routines exactly the same as they are at home, and try to do some things year

after year to give her that secure feeling of knowing what is to come, but to

also try adding new things like a small side trip here and there so we learn

to try new things without the meltdowns or disappointing the rest of the

family. We did take two cars to the beach this year, which made it much

easier to do things in small groups of family in case we needed to go back to

the house for a down time afternoon.