Last weekend

I fall so behind.  I swear.  Anyway, last weekend, I took the kids to my folks' timeshare condo in Ocean City, MD.  The kids had a blast.  They were so utterly stunned by the mini golf courses and fancy lights and cars and things that I felt guilty about the fact that we never take actual vacations (excepting Disney of course).  I grew up going to Rehoboth, so it's only later in life that I've come to appreciate OC as the Baltimore-by-the-sea that it is.  Rehoboth is all tasteful boutiques and preppy shops.  Sure, there are skanky boardwalk folk, but the overall feel of the place is tasteful by beach standards.  Rehoboth looks like this :


Ocean City, on the other hand, has this feel...


Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this place.  But in a different way.  It was car show weekend, so the custom hot rod crowd was out in force, too.  The noise.  Oy, the noise.  But again, the kids loved it.

What they mostly love is the free-flowing junk food.  If I go to Ocean City, I have to get Fisher's popcorn--one tub of caramel, one tub of white cheddar.  And, you know, even though the Rehoboth location has the cool sign, you may as well get some Dolle's taffy while you're there.  Oh, new thing at Dolle's--labels that tell you what flavor you're about to bite into.  Only not all of them have a flavor listed; while some say "Lime" or "Peanut Butter" [gimme!], others say "Ocean City, MD."  So we wondered, is that the flavor?  "Mmm, mine tastes like stale popcorn and seagull poop!"  "Mine tastes like a tatooed fat girl in a bikini!"  Julianna feels that it is her birthright to "make" a Tshirt every time she hits a boardwalk.  (actual quote from her on the boardwalk, "Mom look!  A T-shirt shop!" really?  what're the odds?).  The smell of that heat transfer machine makes me flash back to my own sand-caked childhood, so I generally give in.  Then, playing in the sand!

The only camera I had was my phone, so the quality isn't great.  But here are Mikayla and Ben, making Julianna into a mermaid:


Lily and Emma came up to us and said, "Look!  We're pregnant and we're only little kids!"  Like that's odd in Ocean City.



Tash brought her puppy along.  He's a 4 month old pit bull that looks like the dog from the Little Rascals.  He drew a lot of attention (and not only when he barfed a week's worth of food right on the boardwalk).  At first, it was all boys, and I accused her of getting a dog just to pick up guys.  But then came the lesbians.  And then the weird couples with matching air-brushed Tshirts...so really, she could have her pick!  She's a clever, clever girl.

I bought Emma and Lily some putty that comes in a plastic toilet and makes farting sounds when you push on it.  This is, as you might imagine, hilarious.  Forever. "It Fahted!!"  I'm a good auntie.

Here are the girls.  You can barely make out Ben ahead of them in yellow pants and a white hooded sweatshirt (in spite of the 80 some degree weather.  It was new. What can you do).



Lily and Emma are buddies.  It's terribly sweet:


That's Tash's butt on the right.  Mine is too dainty to even photograph.

So, now they've been to the beach this year, and that's all they get until after Labor Day b/c there is no WAY I'm fighting traffic before then.