Finally....Resting at Lewes, Delaware

Lewes, Delaware looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Photo taken off the balcony of the Yacht Club in Lewes, Delaware.

Where in the world is Lewes, Delaware, and why are we here? Melody has contacts with good friends here and this group needs a couple of days of rest before hitting DC and New Orleans. I am in total agreement with that! After walking all day yesterday in NYC, and again strolling 30 additional blocks at 8 pm to go to the top of the Empire State Building (including manually climbing the last 6 levels of stairs because no one wanted to wait for the elevators), I went to bed truly tired. More tired than I have been in a very long time. I was sore this morning. My feet hurt, my legs were stiff, and my head hurt. But as I have mentioned before, no mercy with this group of youngsters. Before I could get my pain reliever in, we were swiftly walking to the train station, carrying our very heavy bags up stairs, and down the stairs, and lifting them high above the turn stiles. We rode the subway to the train station. Our train ride was 2 hours, then we boarded a bus for another two hours to Lewes, Delaware.

Lewes is a sleepy, quaint little beach town on the Atlantic Coast. It is always windy here and so it is a very popular sailing area and very popular in the summer for its beautiful beaches. Our group was greeted at the Yacht Club by an extremely kind, tan, and very happy group of host families. I am even staying with a host family for the next two nights! It is a wonderful place which you can see in the pictures above. Tomorrow the kids have a full day of kayaking, sailing, motor boats, ocean, sand, swim pool, food and fun. Mike, Niko, and I (the three of us are staying with Vivian) plan on sleeping in a bit, doing some laundry, then meeting up with everyone around noon for the BarBQ. Tonight Mike took us all out for dinner and then we went to see the movie "Angels and Demons". Very good movie, but the book was better, like usual!

Today is my birthday!! Yeah, happy birthday to me. I am 46 today. The kids sang happy birthday to me. Then I had two individuals sing to me the birthday song in their own language. How awesome is that? We have a tradition in this group. If something is found laying around, the owner of it has to sing for it if they want it back. So Bob chose to sing happy birthday to me in Chinese (Taiwanese?) and Niko sang the birthday song to me in German (he was singing for his misplaced camera). I also got a card signed from everyone. It was very sweet. Kayla gave me an awesome "#1 Mom" key chain. It was a great birthday. Thank you every one!