The Daddy Diary: The Maine Event

Heading to Maine in Goldie

So the ladies spent the month of August in Maine. What a surprise!

As usual, the car was packed to the gills on Thursday night as we traveled up to Natick for the stopover at Nana and Papa's.

We made it to OOB by lunch time on Saturday and headed straight to Ken's to begin our vacation right. To the delight of Stella and Marni, cousins Lily and Becca were at the beach when we arrived. We were also joined for the first few days by Nana and Papa, and Karen, Glenn and the hounds.

The kids were kept busy at a Raging Tides baseball game, Palace Playland, various seafood restaurants, and on the beach.

One afternoon we took a bicycle ride on the Eastern Trail. And, while taking a break to play in the nearby marsh, the girls both fell into the water. Totally wet. A little scraped up. Totally shocked. This is now known as "the incident" by Stella.

Eventually we transitioned into "bed and breakfast mode" with the arrival of Nana Audrey, Carol and Norman, and the Leimans.

The Tent.

On our third week at the beach we added a new attraction to The Cottage... a tent. The 4-person tent arrived by FedEx and was quickly set up in the side yard. There were two very excited girls. The original plan was for all 3 of us to sleep in the tent. But by nightfall, Stella chickened out.

Marni and I packed the tent with the bare necessities of camping... lots of comforters and pillows, snacks, water, stuffed animals, electricity from the cottage, a wifi hotspot, cell phone, and my Surface to watch TV.

Although a little cold, Marni had a great time sleeping outdoors (I survived too).

The next day we had some very special guests... cousins Julie, Ted, Ella, Sara, Jack and Mable. This was the first visit to the cottage for the Schwartz/Glovin family in... forever. The five kids quickly got past the shyness, and fun ensued.

This was also night 2 of The Tent. Stella saw how much fun Marni had on the first night and decided to join us. So we packed more comforters, pillows and stuffed animals into the tent and camped out again. Note to self... don't camp outside in Old Orchard on a Saturday night. Too much noise from drunks and parties.

Lot of cousins, digging holes.

The next day the Hoffmans flew in from New Jersey, and the fun shifted into overdrive.

Somewhere in all this awesomeness, we made a radical shift in our summer rituals. The girls and I had been noticing that our usual amusement park, Palace Playland, was feeling a bit small. Palace Playland (or, as we call it, "downtown") has been our go-to amusement park for 10 years (and for 57 years for me). And, it's only a mile down the street.

But this year we bought season passes for Funtown/Splashtown USA. On our first visit, we spent a day in the amusement park section. Loved it! The next day we spent all day in the water park section. Loved it! And the girls returned again when Tyler and Delia came to visit.

So a new tradition is born.

2014 was also the year of the giant amusement park prizes. Stella figured out how to trade in smaller stuffed animals, that she won at various carnival games, for super-gigantic stuffed animals. By the end of the summer, we ended up with 5 big, fluffy, garish visitors to the cottage.

Labor Day weekend brought the end of our time at OOB. We packed everything back into the car (leaving the 5 stuffed animals behind) and headed back to Natick on our way back to Brooklyn.