And where the heck have I been?

Tidying, cleaning, dusting, swiffering. Cocking the tea tray perfectly at the foot of my bed. When this dang house actually sells, I can't wait to ask the buyers if it was the the tea tray that pushed them over the edge. (My bet's on the hammock.)

And welcome to any new readers to the blog. We are thrilled you are here and look forward to hearing more from you!

So this is not really so much a moving related entry, more of our NJ Bucket List entry. Our dear friends the Redwines have a family house on Martha's Vineyard, and after years of invitations, we finally made the schedules work, so we pulled the kiddos out of school and at 5:45am, we pulled out of the driveway and headed up to I-95. It was the longest car trip I've taken with the kids, and you know what? It was fine. We drove for three hours with only about an hour of help from electronics and then pulled over to Rocky Neck State Park.

You enter the beach by going under a railroad beach. Beach + trains + Purl = Arlo about to explode from joy.

That's Lila Redwine, Lucy's girly pal.

I can't tell if The Goose is dancing or doing the "MAH HANDS ARE DIIIIIRTYYYYY!" scream here.

After much cavorting, snacking, and peeing, we got on the road again.

We made it to the Ferry in record time.

Purl.

Nathanial and Oscar B.

Elizabeth and Purl.

Finally on the ferry!

The ferry was uneventful, other than the $86 in snacks we had t spend to keep everyone happy. We arrived at the island and drove to the incredible family house in Edgartown. When you drive up all you can see is this ostentatious mansion next door with acres and acres of lawn and statuary, but then you reach the end of the dirt road and see this:

The view of the front of the house from the beach.

Their private beach in the harbor.

AMAZING. I spent the next two hours oohing and ahhing over lightswitches and hardware and dental moulding, all from when their family built the house in the 1920s. I will post more pictures later.

We played on the beach, fed all seven kids (the husbands came up on the direct NY ferry Friday night, so we were on our own. ) and bedded everyone down for the night.

More later. It's Saturday morning as I write this. The husbands came in last night, we made scrambled eggs with eggs purchased at a farm yesterday this morning, and everyone is down fishing at the dock. Feel free to add comments!