Occasionally there are special member events, like today’s Scuba Santa Welcome Party. Yes, Scuba Santa. I suppose when the stress of ruling the North Pole gets to him, Santa straps on a snorkle and takes a dive with the sharks in Camden? The logic of Scuba Santa eludes me, but the party involved free cookies and hot cocoa and the promise of an indoor snowfall, so count us in.

Scuba Santa sailed in on a Camden fire boat, water cannons shooting full blast. (According to Brady, this was the highlight of the day. “I didn’t like anything else,” he insists.)

While waiting for Santa to make his way from the docks to the aquarium, we ducked back into the ballroom to grab some hot cocoa. Big mistake.

When hosting a children’s party featuring hot cocoa and cookies, it seems like the logical thing to do would be to…oh, I don’t know… MAKE THE HOT COCOA LESS THAN SCALDING HOT? This stuff was like McDonald’s coffee lawsuit hot. So I grabbed some cold milk to dilute it, and instructed Brady to wait a moment because his drink was very hot. While I struggled to open the little paper carton, he ignored my warning and took a swig. Followed by a gigantic spit take all over the pristine white tablecloth and howling about his burned mouth.

What a tragic sight he was, hot cocoa dripping down the front of his wool pea coat and spattered on our handcrafted “Welcome Santa” sign. After the crisis had passed, we hustled the kids back outside to greet Scuba Santa as he arrived on a fire truck. It was quite anti-climactic, what with Santa’s drooping fake beard and Ian hiding in the back seat of the stroller (“where he can’t see me”). But there were elves passing out candy canes.

And the Bumble Snow Monster from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was there. I love me some Bumble Snow Monster. We have a small plush Bumble sitting on our piano, and it growls and roars when you press his paw. Ian is deeply afraid of this toy, so you can imagine the abject terror that the mobile, life-size version inspired.

We made an appearance at the “dance party” (fake indoor snowfall good, lackluster dancing efforts by Bumble and Gill the Shark bad) and dutifully waited for Scuba Santa to dive in the tank. After watching Scuba Santa and his elf dive buddy float around for a few minutes, Brady begged, “Can we just go do regular aquarium stuff?”

So that’s what we did.

(He fared better than his brother, Brady, who was wearing clothing that was two sizes too big.)

While shopping at Walmart for some incidentals, an in-store portrait studio employee approached us. She cheerfully informed me that she could photograph the boys on the spot AND give us a free 20 x 20.

Who wouldn’t want this outfit memorialized in a giant print hanging over their fireplace, right?

Summer is officially over, which means I’ve been encouraging the boys to get to bed at a reasonable hour (setting the router to block internet access to their devices at 9 p.m. is my preferred method of encouragement), debating the merits of haircuts (the older the child, the more resistance met), and fortifying myself with candy corn and Diet Coke.

And now that road trips and days spent at the Shore are no longer cutting into my computer time, it’s back to blogging for me. This calls for the traditional first day exposition: How I Spent My Summer Vacation…

1.)  After skipping the Shore last summer, we finally made our way to Wildwood this year. Sand, sea, tacky t-shirts, lime rickeys, and Old Bay fries. Heaven!

2.)  Fourth of July in Collingswood. Old-fashioned bike parade followed by free ice cream for the kiddies (courtesy of Mister Softee), and surprisingly awesome fireworks for a relatively small town.

3.)  The Great Mormon Road Trip to Palmyra, New York and the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Yeah, we’re not actually Mormon; we just missed the Mesa Easter Pageant.

4.)   Niagara Falls- not as interesting as I’d imagined.

5.)  KC headed to Virginia for three weeks of training, so I opted to drag the two little ones across four states and hang out with family in Michigan. And I got to go to Maker Faire Detroit!

6.)  The alternative? Go crazy unpacking and painting and cleaning the new house. There was plenty of that happening this summer, too. (God help me.)

A random guy turns up on your doorstep. He’s from the bank, doing a “mortgage inspection”. He’s extremely interested in the terms of your lease and the whereabouts of the homeowners. When you fish for some information of your own, he stonewalls. Very bad sign.

Another envelope arrives for your landlord, but this is a weighty one with a return address of a law firm. Some investigation via Google reveals that this particular law firm specializes in residential loan defaults, including foreclosures. OMG VERY VERY BAD SIGN.

Seems like an auspicious time to buy a house, right? (That, and the super low interest rates, of course.) So that’s what we did.

Yeah, I know that there’s another one on the right side of the keyboard, but… I just can’t do it. Over twenty years of typing exclusively using the left shift key makes for a hard habit to break. I keep tapping the broken key and it flies off, which has proven lethal to my concentration.

Not that I was doing so well in the writing department, prior my keyboard’s unfortunate injury. I’ve struggled to find my blogging groove since I nuked my old blog and started fresh with Liberty Elle. (Long story short: Husband’s new career necessitated a bit more caution with personally identifiable information. OR SO HE SAYS.) My recent Eastern European hacker incident made me take a long, hard look at what I was trying to accomplish here. Was it even worth the effort of saving?

I created my first online presence in 1995, when everything was simpler. A web page was text, perhaps a graphic or two, coded by hand, uploaded to the server. No ads, sponsored posts, analytics, or SEO- content was the only concern. I wrote because I like writing. I wrote about things I liked, things that made me happy. As far as old school bloggers go, I was pretty successful; my designation as a Geocities Featured Page garnered a digital camera and enough gift cards to buy a queen-size bed.

I know, this is starting to sound all, “I WROTE MY POSTS TWO MILES UPHILL IN THE SNOW!” My point is that my ramblings didn’t have to fit with a brand identity or garner an audience. There’s so much noise in the blogging community now- it’s easy to get caught up in it and compare yourself.

Some bloggers craft amazing posts that expose their hearts, that make me feel deeply. Others post beautiful photographs of their homes and outfits and meals, making me wish that I lived in their perfect, polished worlds. Some share their knowledge- tutorials and information that I find myself turning to on a regular basis.

And then there’s me, posting about… whatever. My life is imperfect and slightly crazy, a jumble of kids shoehorned into a rental house in a still-unfamiliar place. I write about our life. Sometimes I make something cool or yummy, and I write about that, too.

At times I feel overwhelmed, coping with depression and chronic pain (due to a hopelessly curved spine), but I don’t write about that; I don’t quite know how to turn my struggles into something that would be meaningful to others.

As I restored my content to WordPress and sifted through old posts, I realized that I’m okay with writing for myself. Even if my lackadaisical posting will never rack up impressive numbers, my posts preserve a picture of my life at a single point in time. I cherish that. Also, writing keeps me sane, and blogging requires a bit more care than scribbling in another composition book.

I’m still not quite sure where I belong in the blogging community, but I think that I will keep doing my thing. Whatever my thing is.

Exhibit 1: Thanks to the recent warm weather, the ice cream truck is once again making his rounds in the neighborhood. I ducked into the house to grab some cash while the small ones waited with KC. When I returned, I discovered that another Mister Softee customer had bought Spongebob Squarepants ice cream bars for Brady and Ian.

Ian was disgusted by the bubble gum eyes. And the stroller was covered with sticky drippings by the time they were done. But how cool was that random act of kindness?

Exhibit 2: While waiting in line at the store, Brady struck up a conversation with an elderly Asian man waiting behind us. I’m not quite sure what they talked about, due to the language barrier and Brady’s general reluctance to speak, but it ended with the gentleman peeling off a bill and buying Brady a chocolate bunny. (Brady bit the ears off of it the moment we arrived home. Of course.)

I need to figure out how he does it.

I bought the super-duper annual pass through Google Offers for $99, and it seems like a good expenditure: the kids love hanging out with the fishes. They even mustered up the courage to pet the sharks and rays this time around (though Brady’s sleeve was sopping wet up to his armpit for the remainder of the day).

This photograph is an excellent representation of Ian at this stage of his life. He expresses his strong disapproval by blowing raspberries. How am I supposed to maintain my composure in the face of this? I can’t help but snicker!

I’ll try to restore all of my past posts to their former glory. But until then, just look at it as an experiment in minimalism!

Miki and I dragged my niece, Margot, out for an impromptu photo shoot at the church around the corner:

Ian also got his own session, but was entirely uncooperative. As a friend commented on Facebook, his forlorn expression made it seem as though he had lost his true love:

"You'd like me to do what with this foam heart?"

Poor Brady only got a few quick snaps while out on a walk. His adorable red sweater vest remained in the closet, and his hair styling was courtesy on Photoshop. Sigh.

There’s always Easter cards, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and the ones you love!

First stop: Reading Terminal Market. We expended much of our energy navigating the crowded aisles with two strollers, searching for a table that would seat seven. (Saturday? Auto show at the convention center across the street? My bad.) Lunch was good, though, especially because our family of four spent only $4.19, thanks to creative use of Groupon and LevelUp. (And that included a heavenly Pecan Pie bar from Flying Monkey Bakery for dessert!)

Next: Chinatown. We were on a mission to find a Lucky Cat for my niece, Margot, since she covets the one that sits on our bookcase. Only a white one with a moving arm would do. After ducking into many tiny gift shops and rejecting countless gold/tiny/head-bobbing cats, we finally found a match. I tried to convince Miki (my sister-in-law) that Margot also needed a plastic purse emblazoned with a dancing Dora the Explorer and Bratz character, but she vetoed any kooky knock-offs.

We made our way over to Independence National Historical Park, where we spent an inordinate amount of time collecting brochures at the visitors’ center and using the bathroom, before finally heading over to the Liberty Bell.

There was a crazy line to enter, so KC and I were like, “We’ve seen this bell umpteen times, there’s not a flume ride at the end or anything cool like that, so we’ll hang out and watch the kids while y’all check it out.” But Joe and Miki weren’t feeling it, either, so we all ended up sitting on a park bench and watching Brady, Ian, and Margot careen across the lawn bordering the Liberty Bell Center.

And then something totally weird happened.

A large group of Asian tourists passed by and, before I realized what was happening, they picked up our kids. They began posing for photos, excitedly passing each child back and forth so every member of the group could dote on them.

The kids’ reactions ranged from bemused (Brady) to confused (Margot) to irritated (Ian). As for us parents, we plastered grins on our faces and exchanged incredulous looks while we waited for the moment to pass.

And waited. And waited. “This must be what Justin Bieber feels like,” KC murmured.

Finally, after the last photo was snapped and the tourists coaxed one last goodbye from Brady, they went on their way.

We wrapped up our tour at Independence Hall, but how could the accomplishments of our founding fathers possibly top that experience? Welcome to Philly, dear family!