Welcome Spring, Let's Take a Day Trip! (Part 1)

I heard months ago that in early spring all the maple sugaring houses in New England have an open house weekend.  After attending a fabulous 2nd birthday party for our friend I. two Saturdays ago, I was sitting at my computer at 9:45pm and remembered this little tidbit.  After a quick search I realized that it was THE weekend!!  Brian and I debated about what to do - was it worth trying to figure out a last minute day trip for the next morning?  I did some research on maple sugaring houses in Vermont, we debated some more, he joined in the search looking for places in Massachusetts, I widened my search to Maine and NH, and finally sometime after 11pm we had decided on a tentative plan for the morning - head to Maine to go "maple syrup-ing"!  We wanted to pick a sugar house that wasn't too far away (which nixed Vermont) and then Brian mentioned that he wouldn't mind having some lobster for lunch while we were at it, and since Maine wasn't much farther away then some of the places in Mass. we decided to head north!  We totally made the right decision and had an awesome day.

I volunteered to drive so that Brian could do some work and studying in the car.  He had two crazy complicated hearts cases scheduled for the following day that he had to research, so he had his laptop connected to a power inverter so that it could be plugged into the cigarette lighter for power AND ALSO connected to his phone for internet.  Crazyness! 

I had scoped out some restaurants in Kennebunkport where we could eat before heading to the sugar house, but when we got close to town I realized we were a little early and the restaurant wasn't open yet.  Since we had just passed a sign for the beach, we decided to turn around and check it out.  It was cold and windy but everyone got super excited when we saw these...

Whom do I mean by "everyone"?  These kids!  And Brian!  (Especially Brian!)  Not me, however.  When one of the kids asked me why I wasn't picking up rocks, I told them my favorite thing to do was take pictures of rocks, not collect rocks.  Good thing, I think, since there was quite a lot of collecting going on without my help. 

While we were packing for the trip that morning, Nathan had somehow decided that he needed to bring his net to catch something (I think his original thought was an animal? or fish?), and it was put to great use catching rocks!

Sarah also had a lot of fun splashing in the water - thank goodness we had thought for the kids to wear their rain boots!  We weren't sure about snow and mud and ice at the sugaring house, however the boots were even more crucial during our impromptu beach caper.  I hadn't brought a change of clothes, though, so we had to pull her out after her pants started getting splashed by the waves.

Discussing the merits of Nathan's rock.

This is the start of Brian's collection of special rocks for the day, though more were added after I took this picture.

As soon as Brian started a pile of his rocks, Nathan (of course) did the same!

For the most part, Sarah was more interested in finding large rocks to throw into the water then collecting...

...though when I went back to the car to scrounge up some bags for the collectors to take their treasures home, both kids redoubled their efforts so they could fill their bags with special rocks.  

Reluctantly we tore ourselves away from this treasure trove so that we could continue on with our adventure...