Chesapeake Bay

Over the weekend we took a trip to the Chesapeake Bay.  More specifically we stayed in St. Michael's, Maryland.  I was so excited for this because I had been reading books set around the Chesapeake Bay, I was also over the moon that Ken was not working!  I love to travel but it gets old not being able to share these experiences with him.  Although, I'm also kind of torn about it because we have been able to see and do so much more since his work is paying for the hotel and most of our food.  Anyways, it was time to party!

Passing through DC.  If you look closely you can see the Washington Monument's two tones.

I loved the drive in, especially passing by Anapolis and when we were on the other side of the bay, so beautiful I should have taken pictures:)

The first stop was the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

It's alot of what you would expect.  Lots of boats, a lighthouse, history of the area.  I wish we lived there then my kids could build real sailboats at their weekend program.

Ken took us to this restaurant on the bay.  Most of the customers arrived by boat.  Wouldn't that be nice!  I adore this area and immediately wanted to move here.

Ken and I ordered a tub of crab.  Yum! Yum!

And this is what Nathan thought about the crab...

Ken's not a huge fan of crab just because it takes forever to get the meat out, but he liked how fresh it was.

Apparently Chesapeake Bay Seasoning is spicy.  I was shocked about that, they also eat their crab with vinegar.  I'm more of a butter gal myself but I tried it with vinegar and it was terrific.

We spent the night in a motel in St. Michael's.  There are bed and breakfast type of places or a motel.  A family of 6 doesn't quite work with a romantic B&B.  We had a fun time that evening driving around trying to find ice cream.  We finally got some from a gas station (the only place open) and forgot to get a spoon.  We did have fun memories of that though.

The next morning we had to drive 75 minutes to a little branch for church.  It was such a beautiful drive though.  I told Ken that this was my type of country.  With neat manicured acres and white picket fences with stately home and little sail boats tied by the water.  It's funny how at home we felt in that little branch.  When we are on vacation we usually only go for Sacrament meeting, but we ended up staying all three hours.  The people enveloped us like crazy, we talked to practically every family.  They said they usually have about 100 members but it looked more like 70 with so many being on vacation.

I went with the girls to their Primary class because they were too scared.  That was super fun!  I don't get to ever be with them except in the big Primary room on Sundays and it's not like I can pay much attention to them.  There Primary is so small that they have 4 classes for the 20 children who are normally there.  Rose and Ginger's teacher was a new convert so that was kind of interesting too.  She said, "It's time for snack!"  Then proceeded to pull out a quart size bag full of gummy worms for each child.  She also gave them a bag of chips and two capri suns.  The girls were in heaven.  One boy was allergic to the chips so she gave him 8 fruit roll-ups instead.  I can only imagine what our Bishopric back home would have thought.

It was also neat to be in Sharing Time with Nathan.  They do classes the 2nd hour and Sharing Time the 3rd hour.  There were only 12 kids in Sharing Time and 3 of them were mine.  That is a huge difference from teaching two Sharing Times with 50-60 kids in each one.  Darin was completely sold on moving to Chesapeake Bay after he went to Deacon's quorum and they talked about driving ATV's for their next activity.  It also was because the Priests were so nice and totally took him.  I think that we could really love being in a small ward, sometimes you can get lost in the crowd in our ward and I always hate to see cliques form, especially between the kids.  It was a great change of pace.  

After church we drove ocean side and played in the ocean for a few hours.

I just had to take a picture of this crazy cantaloupe we bought from a Farmer's stand while we were there.  Look at how it compares to my 9" butcher knife.  Crazy big!  Maryland had tons of cute farmer stands too.  I'm pretty sure, this is where I belong.  An hour outside of my favorite city in the US and on the ocean.  I don't think I could ask for anything else!