We're back from a lovely week away at the beach, where perfect days were sandwiched between hellish sleepness nights because the residents of the apartment above us apparently liked to run laps in combat boots while rearranging all the furniture between 3 and 5 a.m. 

We did not particularly love our rental this year, because 1) SEE ABOVE, and  2) We discovered during dinner one night that it was possible to very easily and accidentally trip the lock on the sliding door leading out to the second-story, screened-in deck from the inside, thus locking your damn ass outside. 

We were all completely stuck for about 20 minutes until we managed to get the attention of some people coming down a nearby flight stairs (who, thankfully, were NOT the nocturnal Sumo wrestlers from directly upstairs) who came inside our unit and rescued us. Meanwhile, we'd left the stove on and all the smoke alarms started going off, and I don't think I need to even TELL YOU who specifically and "accidentally" tripped the inside lock, right?

Mmm-hmmm. Baby Ike is back on his bullshit. 

Also, 3) This was on the coffee table and haunted my every waking moment, because WTeverlovingF.

But, you know, whatever. We never spend all that much time in the rental anyway, especially when we luck out with a week of near-perfect beach weather.
 

(Can I just say that going to the beach with older children is like, WHERE IT IS AT? No diapers or sand-poops! No maniacal toddlers running out to sea! Just semi-independent humans who can swim AND who are capable of carrying their own goddamn towel/boogie board/precious bucket o' shells back home at the end of the day! It's GLORIOUS.)

Plus they are much neater ice-cream eaters too. 

Meanwhile, the responsible adults stayed busy, doing questionable shit like...making habanero tequila:

And playing beer pong.



(Let's consider this college prep.)

Anyway! It was a great trip, and now it's over. We brought home a bit more sand than I'd like but very little dirty laundry! We're finally getting good at this.