Our mini-vacation took us from Frederick, MD to Ocean City, MD with a special stop on Assateague Island, home to wild horses. We crossed a lot of cool bridges on our drive.
The 1947 newberry honor book, Misty of Chincoteague, is based on these wild
horses and the kids and I recently read it aloud together (thanks, Aunt Louise!). It was so fun to get to see them in person. The book's actually about the horses that live on the VA side of Assateague -
there's a fence dividing the two herds. The MD side (in green) prides
itself on being hands-off with the horses, but the VA side (in red) does a big round up once a year and swims all
the horses and their foals across the bay. They auction off the foals
to help with population control (and continue tradition) and then swim them back across to their
sanctuary. We hear it's a huge event and people come from all over to see it.
These horses are wild in the same sense that the elk at Yellowstone are
wild. They don't have owners, but they obviously are used to having
people around, as one searched our kid-less stroller for food and then tried
to get into our van.
Henry sums it up well at the end of this video. We had an awesome vacation! (minus the Eliza part mentioned in the previous post)
With a long MLK weekend, we went to Ocean City MD to see the wild horses and stay in a fun hotel. We were swimming in the pool, and we had divided kid duty, Alvin with Miriam and Henry and Tammy with Eliza and Clarissa. After a while Tammy got Clarissa out of the pool to take pictures of A, M, & H. We left Eliza happily playing in the quite expansive shallow end. Eliza is almost three and old enough to stay where she can touch, right? After all, there's never a problem when we're actually watching her.
So Tammy is taking pictures and video of the others trying to get the perfect moment when the water splashes down from above (tricky, because there's no pattern to when it happens), when a nice little girl about 7 years old comes carrying Eliza back to us. We politely say thanks, but we're sure Eliza was never really in danger. The nice girl was just being over protective, or Eliza just got scared when it was no big deal.
Then we go back to our hotel room and look through the pictures. First, we see a video where Eliza (momentarily highlighted in hearts) leaves the shallower end following a ball she was playing with...
Then we see this picture!
Eliza's in the back, but you can only see the top of her head (to the right of Alvin's shoulder). Here it is zoomed in:
Can you believe we let this happen? Makes us absolutely sick inside!
And this is of the girl carrying Eliza back. (Yes, when Eliza's curls get wet, she has long, very mullet-like hair.)
These pictures are so scary. It's hard to describe the full range of emotions we have experienced, but guilt and immense gratitude are at the top of the list. We are so so grateful that little girl was at the right place at the right time to save our little girl. We wish we could go back and thank her a thousand times over.
In sharing this experience, Alvin's co-worker shared a similar experience where he was videotaping one child when his second had his flotation device flip him over such that he was stuck upside-down, but he was fortunate enough to see it in time. We have a dear friend at church (who wasn't taking pictures) but lost a 2 year old in a pool full of people and with lifeguards on duty. We feel so blessed and know that she was truly being watched over by a more Heavenly parent than us. We have hugged our kids a little more this week and tried to appreciate all the precious moments we have with them each day.
We add our warning to the common sense knowledge we're sure you already have - ALWAYS keep an eye on your little ones at the pool.
We can't imagine if we had lost Eliza. She's such a gem. Here's a glimpse at some of the cute things she's doing, saying, and singing these days. (you can read the words better if you make the video full screen, but the video quality goes down some.)
We're almost ready to say goodbye to 2012. These clips are from our house in MD, the Indianapolis Children's Museum, Christmas in IL, and a bit in NC. It's not exactly representative of how we spent our time, but you work with what you have. We only wish we could give you the Alvin and the Chipmunks surprise in 3D.
In November, Tammy took Miriam and Henry ice skating with coupons they had earned. This was Henry's first time skating and we were surprised by how well he was able to laugh off his falls and get up to try again. By the end of the outing he proudly made it around the rink twice without falling or using the wall. Miriam did a great job too, but we chose to highlight the falls in this video given the greater entertainment value.
We're trying to clean up our video collection from 2012, and we've thrown together some odds and ends from Sept. to Nov. It's a bit disjointed and a little random, but who doesn't like to hear a baby giggle, right? Warning: experimental video editing technique in the last 6 seconds.
When it gets too cold to send our kids out to get some exercise, we make videos of when they used to use their muscles (fall 2012). Maybe visualization will help them burn off a few calories.
We made this video (with one minor change) as a Christmas gift for our nephew who will be turning two soon and is learning to talk. My brother told us we have a future on PBS! :)
We don't really expect you to watch this, but we wanted to put it on our blog for our kids to watch. Being the stars of the show, they, of course, love watching it over and over.
If you have a young child, there's a chance this might keep them occupied for a few minutes while you get something done, but no guarantees.
