Maine (vacation part 3)

Visiting the Comins in Maine was so fun! Jed's sister, husband, and family live in Maine, right on the coast, and we stayed with them for about a week. (Everyone has a funny face in the above picture because they are all "chewing" on grass. :) )

As soon as we arrived, Jenna and Kiersten called dibs on Eliza. Isn't this picture cute of the three girls? It was taken only 2 or 3 minutes after we walked in the door.

Benjamin just adored his cousins. Here's Jenna reading to them all. Jenna also played blocks with Benny upstairs a lot during our stay. He LOVED having a dedicated playmate. He could go on and on playing with her and would beg her to stay if she needed a break. :) What good cousins he has!

The first place they took us was to this quaint lighthouse on the coast. The coastline is beautiful in Maine. Every day we would pack a lunch and take all the kids out to the beach or some place fun.

Here we are, below, at a beach that had all kinds of neat things among the rocks. There were tons of snails, lots of hermit crabs, crabs of all sizes (I'm holding the biggest one we found), little eels that would flap like mad when we lifted the rocks that were hiding them, clams, and even a small lobster. It was fun. Everyone is showing the camera something cool they found in the picture below.

While we were driving home from the beach one day, Eliza was feeling sad. She kept making her sad puckering face and starting to cry. But every time Shane leaned forward and talked to her she would smile and be happy. As soon as she couldn't see him, she would start to cry again. He was a pro at making her happy. He played with her a lot during our stay and he never failed to get a smile out of her. She loved him!

One evening we went to their landlord's home for a lobster dinner. This was true Maine dining! We started out the meal with "steamers" - a whole pile of yummy clams on each plate. You break the shells apart, take out the small clam inside, remove and discard the dark part, and then dip the rest of it in clam juice to 'rinse' it and then in garlic butter. And then pop it in your mouth. Yum yum! :) After we were stuffed full of clams, we started cooking the lobsters. That gave us some time to make room for more Maine seafood. :) These lobsters were fresh and locally caught. And they were huge!

Benjamin and I are looking at those monster lobsters on our plates and wondering how to use the shell crackers on those things... and Shane has already dug in! Look at that face. He LOVED this meal. :)

MORE BEACHES.....

One of the beaches we went to was a 'pebble' beach. The sand was still sand, but it was very coarse, and it kind of hurt to walk on it! But it was cool in the way that it didn't stick to you like regular sand does.

This is the last beach in Maine; as you go North, there aren't any more beaches like this, just rocks and cliffs and coast. (That's what the national park manager told us. We had a long conversation with him since he rear-ended us and we had to wait for the police to do a report! Ironic, huh?)

There's Kiersten, Ryan (Jed's Dad), and Cerissa lounging on the beach in the picture on the right.

Jenna and I decided to stand still on the beach and let our feet sink as the waves washed over them. Although you can't see in the photo below, our feet were totally covered in the sand. This water was COLD, by the way. It hurt for awhile, but when this picture was taken, we were numb and couldn't even feel the coldness anymore. :)

Shane found this tidal pool at the top of the one of the rocks. It was full of very warm water, and helounged in it like it was his personal jacuzzi. It was hilarious because Michel and Cerissa were both telling him how gross that bacteria-ridden water was, but he didn't mind one bit!
He was a good sport to let Benny borrow his toy, show him how to fill it, and then let him shoot the water at him. :)