Operation Tally-Ho : 1 Couple, 1 Baby, 2 Dogs, and an RV

A Sunny Seascape & Gigi

by Briana on October 21, 2014

Hello! And welcome to the sunny seascape of a quaint New England costal town. If you close your eyes and inhale deeply you may be able to smell the salty air, taste the taffy kisses, and hear the seagulls. (I’ll wait… Wasn’t that nice?!)

We spent Labor Day weekend (and a couple days beyond) in York, ME. I have never been so in love with a little beach-y town. This was our chance to get to spend time with my Aunt Diane & my Aunt Wendy (my dad’s other 2 sisters, 2 brothers to go in this visit). My Aunt Wendy lives in York and works at the most charming little school. My Aunt Diane lives abroad and works for the State Department, but had rented a beach cottage for the week. Naturally we crashed her entire vacation, “Don’t mind if we do!!”

The term “cottage” is funny to me because a lot of these houses are big! I actually googled “cottage” to see of my idea of a small dwelling was a weird CO thing–it’s not. Anyways, her cottage was mega cute and right near the beach. We spent our days relaxing, walking around the cute town, playing in the sand (toes only in the chilly Atlantic), eating ice cream and checking out the local Nubble Lighthouse.

On one of our visits, when I was a youngster, we went out with my Aunt Wendy and pulled up some lobster traps. Cool right?! We took our bounty home and began to prep and cook them. I don’t think I had ever been so traumatized. Those poor lobster!! Once they were on our plates, the mental scarring continued. My brothers (who felt no remorse for the crustaceans), began to rip apart their bodies, dumping fluid (“Look! It’s pooping!”) and stabbing various lobster eating tools through the eye sockets. Neeeeeless to say, I hadn’t eaten lobster for a looooooong time! AND BOY WAS I MISSING OUT!! Holy cow! We were in lobster heaven! We ate all the lobster rolls we could get our hands on, whole lobsters, took a Lobster Boat tour that my Aunt Wendy guided and held lobster!! No more Miss Nice Claws! I dove into my lobster feeding frenzy! (And so did Matt, Siena on the other hand was not too fond of lobster. It’s just about the first food that we’ve introduced that she feels “meh” about. More for us!)

With our pores practically oozing butter, we headed South again to visit and stay with my dad’s mother, or Gigi for Great Grandma as she’s now called by Siena. She resides in Portsmouth, NH– another great little coastal town. Gigi gave us a tour and we had a really nice picnic in the park. It was really wonderful to get to spend some one-on-one time with her. I think one of my fondest memories is of hearing her reading to Siena and them both laughing.