Our first full day

Well, we have completed our first full day here, and this vacation continues to live up to its name. I feel like I'm in a dream, its so amazing!!! Instead of just going into boring details, I will tell you the story of our day in pictures:

Our morning started with this:


Pedro waws walking outside to eat his breakfast (a bowl of cereal) and he thought the glass door was open. It wasn't. :)

We spent most of the day on the beach, and most of that time was spent in the water. Did I mention that the waves are PERFECT for these guys?!?

Here is Luis showing off his pink water shoes. :) (They are really Kiara's)

We had a lot of fun in the water. :)






When they weren't in the water, the kids spent time burying each other in the sand...

And building sand castles.

We spent all morning at the beach, came in for lunch, relaxed a bit at the house, and then headed back to the beach for a few hours in the late afternoon. The kids are allowed to go to the beach without me or Shera as long as they are not alone and are with either Lindsay, Luis or Zuley (the 3 oldest). (They are not allowed in the water unless Shera and/or I are there). The funny part to me is that they generally do things as a whole group. These are some great kids.

Shera and I needed to make a grocery store run, so we left the kids at the house and ran our errands. We were gone much longer than we expected (Zuley, who is 18, and Lindsay, who is 16, were with the kids) and we expected to return to a trashed house with several kids mad at each other while the rest demanded dinner.

Instead, as we turned the corner to the house we saw all the kids run inside. Quite suspicious. As we unloaded the groceries, we couldn't find any kids. However, when we went back to the car to get the rest of the bags, we found the car full of all of the kids. They then jumped out of the car pretending to be zombies and chased me and Shera all around and through the house. It was hilarious!! Apparently they spent the whole time planning this prank and even ran inside several other times thinking they had seen our car. I love these kids.

For dinner tonight we grilled hot dogs and hamburgers...and had so much fun doing it!

Each kid is responsible for cleaning up their own mess at breakfast and lunch, and we have meal crews that are responsible for the dinners. (We only have 5 dinners here, so we split into pairs so each of us is only responsible for one dinner). Miguel isn't tall enough to reach the sink to do the dishes, but he makes it work. :)

After dinner we decided to go for an evening stroll on the beach. That quickly turned into crab catching, and I literally watched all 9 of these kids work together to catch crabs for over an hour. There was a lot of screaming, running and laughing. We all had a blast.

And they caught several crabs...

So, now we're all back at the house getting ready for bed. We don't have bed times this week, but we do have "in your room" times. Last night that led to a very late night for the kids, but we are all so tired, I think tonight might be different. We'll see though...

For now, they are all crowded around the TV taking turns playing Guitar Hero on PlayStation (yes, we brought one with us...as well as an Xbox. They were calling for rain and I wasn't going to take any chances!).

Tomorrow will be another full day at the beach. We can't wait!!

(Oh, and a funny story I forgot from yesterday. I knew this was going to be a great week from the get go. Once we all got in the cars and were heading out of Philly, Miguel grabbed a bag of chips, banged them on Lindsay's head and yelled: "Woohoo! Vacation!". He is ridiculous. How blessed am I?!?)