Vacation photos!

So this August we rented a beach house in Rhode Island for a week.  It was great!  Everyone enjoyed it.  Especially Gilly.

It was an easy walk from the house to the beach -- Gretchen's favorite, I might add.

We lucked out on the week that we picked for our vacation:  both of my brothers could spare some time to come to visit!  That meant that Scott and Julia came to visit with Sage and new, cute, and somewhat pneumatic baby Jura (despite Scott's new job at Harvard) and that Seth and Lana flew in from Texas with Katelyn and James (despite their hectic work schedules and Lana's night school classes).  Here's a pictures of all of Grammy Donna's (Did I mention she came, too?  So did Gretchen's mom) grandkids on the couch:

I don't want to start another "sea monster" craze, but what is this thing? Mom took the picture and says it's a big bird of prey taking a sizable fish out of the water for its dinner.  I have my doubts, though...
Especially since I think that this could be one of the monster's partially decomposed feet, washed up on the shore (which would explain the stink at certain points along the beach, come to think of it).

Anyway.  The kids had a lot of fun even if, come bedtime, they were all parked on the floor of one room like SUVs on the Block Island ferry.

They're still working on that bike path to Block Island, by the way.  So if you're planning on biking there, make sure you bring a towel in a Ziploc bag to wipe the salt water off your frame afterwards.

Lots of fun.

Maybe too much fun.

James and Harry played with Star Wars toys and Legos much of the time they were there.  Mom took this picture and originally captioned it "James and Harry or Seth and Ben?"  I still like Lego, and I know Seth still digs Star Wars.  Oh, and if you happen to be the people who rented the house after we did, I'm so sorry for the Lego bits you probably stepped on in the middle of the night.

Well, that's about it.  Except for one strange bit of deja vu.  When I first walked into this rental, I thought to myself, "I've been here before."  See, I had some friends who went to URI for college and these beach houses get rented out to college students in off season.  But there are lots of beach houses, probably all built at or about the same time.  Probably all look similar, right?

Maybe.  But when I banged my elbow on the corner of the sink while using the bathroom in the middle of the first night there?  That clinched it.  I've definitely been there before.