No one wants to wake up at 7 am on vacation, but the kids were up in anticipation of the Easter egg hunt and the adults were up by default. The Easter Bunny brought sand toys, kites and other vacation-related toys for the kids. So by 8 am the kids took off in search of 200 candy-filled plastic eggs hidden in every conceivable spot in the house.

Just a few hours later a sub-set of the family were in San Diego to take a tour of the USS Midway, the Vietnam War era aircraft carrier that now serves as a floating museum in the harbor. Patrick and Lauren, the only two young’ens to brave the tour spent time answering questions on a supplied pamphlet in an effort to earn their wing pins. It was a fascinating tour, and as is usually the case when I take any kind of museum tour, there’s never enough time to take in everything that’s on offer.

Back at the beach pad, the rest of the family had returned from a shopping trip and we arrived in time to meet up and hit the beach again. The seas had calmed some more from the past few days of thrashing nastiness, and we were vacationer-become beachcombers as a way to get our feet wet. The high seas had brought us a bounty of sand dollars, starfish and shells.

Eventually Emily got brave in the waves right up until a family of 1000 or more crabs washed past our feet in water just shallow enough to make it easy to see them. She tried to climb me like a lineman on a phone pole then dismounted and sprinted for dry land. She overcame her fears for her first attempt at boogie boarding. The ocean had regained a bit of its previous days’ temper though and made her early tries difficult at best. I never found a good wave, but Emily laughed and enjoyed herself, and for me that made it all worthwhile.

The dolphins paid us another visit, frolicking right in front of our house for nearly a half hour. The entire family–minus Matt and Kaitlyn-has been laughing and enjoying ourselves immensely. And while I don’t have a single photo to prove it, I believe that this is the night that Wes initiated himself into the Mielcasz clan. By 5 O’clock he was what you might call faded, and by 8 he had taken a long bus ride and then passed out. There were many photos taken, but they seem to have mysteriously dissapeared.

Are my posts getting shorter as vacation takes its tole on me? Perhaps.