I’ve been very busy at work, recently. I needed to take some time off, and my birthday occurred more or less after most of my major projects were due to be finished. So I went ahead and scheduled off a week and a half, starting on my birthday (October 6… 32 years old!) without any real plan as to what I would do with it.

I’m currently on day three of my vacation, and the first three days have been spent with my little family of four. Today we just returned from a trip to stay at the InnSeason Resorts HarborWalk, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. This was an interesting trip, because Falmouth has never really been a destination for us in and of itself. We’ve been there many times, but only for the purposes of taking one of the ferries (the Island Queen or the Steamship) to visit Rebecca’s parents on Martha’s Vineyard. This time, we stayed *in* Falmouth and pretty much everything we did was in Falmouth. In fact, the resort we stayed at was located adjacent to the parking lot for the Island Queen, and we’ve walked past it on our way to the Island Queen many times, without a second thought that we’d ever actually stay there!

In any case, because of their timeshare membership, Rebecca’s parents were able to help us get rooms at the resort at a pretty steep discount. We ended up with two adjoining rooms, each of which had its own bathroom, kitchen, bed, pull-out couch, tv, and electric fireplace. There was more than enough room for the girls to run around, hang out, and play while Mama and Papa had some time together. We also did some swimming at the indoor pool of one of the other InnSeason resorts in Falmouth, which we had free access to.

In addition to the swimming and hanging out, we went to the Woods Hole Science Aquarium, run by the National Marine Fisheries Service. It was a fairly small aquarium, when compared to something like the New England Aquarium in Boston. But what was really cool about this one was that once you had walked through the main gallery of the aquarium, you could go up some stairs and walk around *behind* the tanks, seeing how everything worked behind the scenes. They had some extra exhibits, and you could see how the tanks were opened to take fish out, or put food in and were fitted with some high quality biorb heater to keep the fish water warm. Very cool. They also had some seals in a pool out in front of the aquarium, and we were there while they were feeding the seals. The girls loved watching the seals swim around, come up for food, and splash in the water.

Since we had our own kitchen(s) at the resort, we bought most of our food and prepared it at the resort. We did go out for a few meals, however. One of my favorites was lunch at Mary Ellen’s Portuguese Bakery in Falmouth. It was a tiny little place attached to the back of a Dairy Queen, with a counter and stools, and some small tables for seating. The four of us sat at stools up at the counter. I enjoyed a Portuguese omelette with linguica and Portuguese cheese, with grilled home fries and Portuguese bread toast, while Rebecca had the pork cacoila with rice. Catherine stuck to the grilled cheese sandwich and fries. The food was delicious – the flavors of the omelette were sublime.

Here are some of my favorite photos from our trip:

Birthday lunch at b.good in Hingham (we stopped there on the way down to use the coupon I got LAST YEAR on my birthday...)

The girls playing "roll the pumpkin" on (one of) the bed(s) at the resort

My girls!

You can see all of the photos from our trip in the Falmouth Trip gallery.

This little trip was just long enough to enjoy some time away from home with the family, while not too long to break the bank. It was a good start to my time off. I plan to spend the rest of my time off helping out around the house, getting some home projects done, hanging out with the girls so that Rebecca can do some of her own projects, and generally enjoying working for my family and not for someone else.

I’m also looking forward to my parents coming up to visit this coming weekend. They’ll only be here for a couple of days, but it will be good to see them and for them to get to visit with the girls.