Vacation--Day 7

Teddy: Wow, what an amazing last day for our vacation! Spaulding: We would have updated our journal sooner, but with all that traveling, all those adventures, packing to come home, the tearful good-byes and getting all the sand off our stuff, we were just really tired! Teddy: Still really tired, and we’ve been home for a couple of days! Spaulding: Well, you had it doubly hard with making Daddy feel better as he went through that drastic change in sleeping patterns! Teddy: Yeah, he’s sick, therefore tired, and sleeping so often messed up his sleeping patterns. He has that job interview this afternoon, so slept different hours yesterday and the day before. I didn’t go to sleep for those five hours that Daddy slept the other evening; therefore, I was up for over 24 hours straight! Beary, beary tired! Spaulding: Thank God, you and Daddy slept really well last night! Teddy: Daddy slept for 6 hours, which is good for him, and I got to sleep for 10 hours! Feeling beary refreshed today! Spaulding: Anyway, back to our vacation adventures! Axlerod, Teddy, Ding and I did go out early to go saltwater fishing… Teddy: We’ve gone freshwater fishing before, but never went out on a big boat, other than our heliplaneship boxcar, to go saltwater fishing! Spaulding: And Lady, Valentine, Dee and Sarah stayed home to go shopping! Teddy: Whew! We were beary lucky that they stayed home considering what happened! They didn’t even get to go shopping, other then grocery shopping! Spaulding: We had invited all of our Internet Teddy Bear buddies to come and visit us, if they wanted to. Teddy: We told them that if we weren’t at the campsite all they had to do was telepath us and we’d come running back! Spaulding: Funny timing for when they telepathed us though! Teddy: We were velcroed into our seats, so the fish couldn’t pull us off the boat easily and we had just started to fish! Ding had just thrown his bait on the hook overboard and the sinker didn’t even let it hit the ocean floor before he got a bite! Spaulding: And what a bite!!! We thought it was a whale shark, Moby Dick, or Bruce from Jaws! Teddy: It yanked him right out of his Velcro and into the water! Spaulding: Being in magical Axlerod time, no one on the boat even knew we were there, so no one could help us! Teddy: But like usual, Axlerod saved the day, by stopping all time but on the three of us! Spaulding: Thankfully, we were in our magical swimsuits! Teddy: Not only do they stop us from getting our stuffing and beans from getting wet, but they also let us breathe under water! Spaulding: I was so scared for my son that I almost burst out crying, but when I remembered that he could still breathe and saw Axlerod freeze time even more, I was so relieved that we immediately jumped into the water after Ding! Teddy: Spaulding was thinking like a father. Only one thing on his mind—save Ding! Axlerod and I were thinking a little more rationally. We knew when we jumped into that water that we would never get back on that beary big people boat! No choice though! We had to save Ding! Luckily, we installed a homing device on out heliplaneship boxcar! As we swam in the water chasing after Ding, I turned on the device and our vehicle started to come out to find us! Spaulding: Since Axlerod had stopped time so quickly, once we got into the water, we could see Ding. He was down pretty deep and hadn’t let go of his fishing pole! Teddy: That’s when we got the telepathic messages! I heard from my favorite gal, Valentine! All of our Internet buddies were coming down and the gals had quickly run to the grocery store to pick up supplies for a huge party! Spaulding: Sarah decided to call it a Bearch Beargo Party, sorta like an old-fashion beach bingo party, but with stuffed animals! Lady started listing all that were coming, but was cut short when she caught what I was thinking, and then all I sensed was panic in her. Fortunately, I telepathed what I was seeing and she knew Ding would be all right! Teddy: We quickly caught up with Ding and Spaulding was about to cut Ding’s line to free him from the fish he caught, but Ding stopped him. He said that if he went through all this trouble to catch a fish, the least that should happen is that he catches the fish! Spaulding: And my mind was also catching telepathic messages from a bunch of stuffed animals, so I knew we needed lots and lots of food for our party! Teddy: Our heliplaneship boxcar arrived right then with one of the spare trailers still attached! Spaulding: We almost cut Ding’s line anyway when we saw the fish! I thought it was a huge ocean leach—beary flat and eyes on the top side of his head. Teddy: It looked like someone really big had stepped hard on it. It was sideways! Spaulding: Thankfully, our beary smart poppa, Axlerod, had seen one of these fish when Mommy and her Daddy had gone fishing in the ocean. He said it wasn’t a leach, but a flounder. Flounders are bottom feeders, so have developed to lie sideways on the ocean floor and both eyes ended up on the top half of their head! Teddy: It was huge too! It was bigger then Spaulding and me together! Spaulding: Even Axlerod hadn’t ever seen one that big before! Teddy: Axlerod told us how to fillet it, giving the inners back to the ocean to feed other fish and we hauled it in our trailer! Spaulding: I don’t know who was prouder—Ding or me! Teddy: Me either but you were both so proud your heads got all puffed up and floated, so you both helped us get back quickly even with the extra weight! Both: kehehehehehe Spaulding: And what a crowd when we did get back! Our Internet friends—Holly, Brownie, Caboose, Mawson, Spence, Ted E. and all the rest had come! Teddy: And Caboose brought his favorite food—grape jam! And Mawson had stopped by Pooh Corner to pick up Winnie the Pooh, his friends and a bunch of honey! Spaulding: And our new neighbor, Dino, brought Raggedy Ann, Grover and the Philly Phanatic! He also brought Mommy and Daddy’s CD/stereo radio boom box with extra batteries! Teddy: And those six dozen bears that Mommy keeps in the basement until she finds homes for them overheard our neighbors talking about the party, so they all came! Spaulding: Even the lifeguards and sheriff from Cape May came during their lunch hour! AND, they brought a dozen cases of hotdogs!!! Teddy: And Edgar the Egret from the bird sanctuary flew up with a bunch of his friends, each carrying a case of NeHis! Spaulding: Sharon, the sheriff, had stopped by Wildwood’s police station to get several barriers to block off a big chunk of the beach for us! Teddy: We were pretty safe from all the people on the beach, since they couldn’t see us, but Sharon wanted us to have free reign on a big section of the beach for our Bearch Beargo Party! Spaulding: Everyone gathered around to inspect Ding’s catch! Even the lifeguards had never seen such a big flounder before! They did, however, know how to cook it over our campfire and there was enough for everyone! Teddy: Dee won at limbo, but, then again, she’s only 5” tall, so had a great advantage! Spaulding: Not to brag or anything…. Both: kehehehehehehe Spaulding: But I won the dance contest! Teddy: The people said that we had a huge advantage dancing without bones in us! And the stuffed animals with short limbs also thought we had an advantage, but since Spaulding has longer limbs then me, he won! Spaulding: And, of course, Teddy won the singing contest with his rendition of the “Theme Song from Enterprise!" Then again, he sings it all the time and I feel so privileged to hear him sing it so often! Teddy: The tug-of-war was a lot quicker then I thought it would be! It was all the stuffed animals against the humans! You would think 200 stuffed animals could beat 15 lifeguards and a sheriff, but, nope! The people won! Spaulding: And we did teach Caboose (aka Ilovegrapejam) to try dipping hotdogs into the jam! We both liked it! Teddy: Mawson won our version of Jeopardy! He’s so smart, I bet he could win the championship game that’s running this week and next week! Spaulding: He’s the best thinker I’ve ever met in a bear! He ponders EVERYTHING until he understands it! Teddy: Brownie won the baking contest! Of course, Brownie made Brownies! Spaulding: And Holly won the scavenger hunt! That black-out she lived through must have sharpened her eyes to see things! Teddy: And you should have seen the size of the sandcastle we all made! Everyone worked on it! Spaulding: Some of it was dripped sand, some was patted sand and some was formed in special containers that the lifeguards had brought especially to make sandcastles! Teddy: By the time we were done, we had covered the entire roped off area we were in! Spaulding: The little stuffed animals could actually go into some of the rooms, since the lifeguards had reinforced the tunnels with Popsicle sticks! Teddy: All summer they have at least one Popsicle per shift and at the end of the summer they always use the sticks to reinforce their one huge sandcastle they make, usually on Labor Day! Spaulding: And since Edgar and his feathered friends are experts at construction work, with all the nests they make during their mating seasons, they were in charge of fixing up the crow’s nests and watch towers of the sandcastle! Teddy: This wasn’t your typical sandcastle! Spaulding: We were sad that our vacation and our party were over, but we did leave that sandcastle to make the people wonder how it got there! Both: kehehehehe Teddy: It took us over an hour just to say good-bye to everyone! Spaulding: Ding tried to talk Sarah into coming home with us, but she loves her Mommy as much as we love ours! Ding, Dino and Sarah hugged and cried together for 15 minutes. We did have to promise them all that we would visit again, and we will! Teddy: It was so sad to go, but we were also excited to go home and stay home for a while. Coming home from vacation every day during vacation helps the homesick feelings, but being with Mommy and Daddy is simple what we were meant to do and we love it so! Spaulding: So, until next time….