Labor Day Weekend

Our Labor Day weekend was spent at Assateague Island on the coast of Maryland. My set of challenges for this particular camp out was a lack of husband for most of the weekend (working), a 7 year old with a cast that was not supposed to get sandy or wet, and an 18 month old who is eager to explore the world whether I follow him or not. However, the pros for the trip far outweighed the cons. My parents, and my 3 brothers and their families arrived a few hours after I did. Our good friends, the Heaths (most of them have new last names now), the Mowers and their families were also there and we had a great time chatting with them. The weather was gorgeous until the last morning, and the insects were not much of an issue. There were some large jelly fish in the ocean, but as far as I know no one was stung too bad.


I paused from our tent set-up to take a picture of Drew and Sydney being so helpful. It was my first time setting up our giant family tent alone... but as it turns out, my kids are getting old enough to be an asset to getting things done sometimes. I used one of Andy's socks as a covering for Drew's arm... it did the job pretty well.


Sydney helped with pounding in the sand stakes.


After the cousins arrived and got their camp all set up, they got a soccer game going in the open area behind our tent.


A nice healthy donut breakfast, which has unintentionally become a bit of a Watson camping trip tradition. I gave the kids a piece of fruit too, which I may or may not have done for myself.


The ever watchful seagulls wanted to eat our donuts, but we didn't share this time.


Matt liked to sit in the holes that the bigger kids made. He also had fun sliding down them like a slide, which made for some very sandy diaper changes.


We love the ocean. Drew sports newspaper bags ducked taped to his arm, or rubber kitchen gloves to keep the water out.


Sydney jumps the waves.


My nephew Alex. He used to eat sand as a toddler, and now he likes to have as much of his body covered in it as possible (he is in the sand mountain). This will be Michelle's little Evi in 8 more years.


On the day of our departure, the clouds over the ocean were striking. I woke up before everyone (Andy was here by this point), and walked over the dune to take a photo. Then I realized that the storm was quickly approaching us, so I hustled back to get the family going and the tent down, but it was too late. The rain and wind were strong and the tent had plenty of leaky areas. Andy was the one to brave the elements while I attempted to keep the kids dry and happy in our tent.

As usual, it was a great trip. A lot of my favorite parts were not photographed, but some other good memories were...

--taking the kids into Ocean City for a night, and riding the giant Ferris Wheel.
--discussions over the nightly campfire.
--watching the kids have so much fun playing hide and seek at night around our camp.
--Andy's arrival.