Our beach weekend recap

After our daughter announced she didn't realize we lived next to the Atlantic Ocean, we made fast plans, got a hotel for two nights and went to the beach.
Annie Kate woke up to this note on our door announcing that she was not going to school and to pack her bags.
I couldn't believe we were doing something so spontaneous. Jeff didn't have work because of Veteran's Day, so we were off. Oh how our life has changed!
It was only a 2 1/2 hour drive to Ocean City. We got to the hotel by noon and headed to the boardwalk. It was pretty much dead for the winter, not that it felt like winter it was 70 degrees all weekend. We had sick boardwalk food and got attacked by dive bombing birds that pooped on my camera flash, ick!Then we walked down the the beach. It was so cute because Caroline could not run fast enough. She loved the sand in her feet.

Jeff loved running from the waves with the girls. He even wrote in the sand the date and place for me to take a photo. ( I am rubbing off on him!) Which is a great tradition even if you live on the beach. It is kind of like my families peanut butter tradition.
Annie Kate ended up getting completely in the water and was swimming around. So we headed to get a boogie board for the morning. It started to get a little cold so we spent the night swimming in the hotel swimming pool.
We had the hotel swimming pool to ourselves, which was good because we were so rowdy. We then got ready for dinner and were so lucky to go to dinner with friends. The head of Jeff's department and his good friend from Vanderbilt was in town with his family. We had been trying to get together with them since we moved here and how funny that we both had to go out of town to do so.
We went to Phillips seafood buffet. Crab, shrimp and food galore. If the floor was any sign of how much fun the kids had then it would show they had a blast. They made such a mess, but ate a ton of food, which is rare for our girls. It was so fun to see our friends and we made plans to meet up at the beach the next morning.

The kids were so relied up from the day and were jumping from bed to bed in the hotel room. Are we the only parents who let their kids jump on the beds in a hotel. The photos were so funny!

The weather was a little breezy in the morning but that didn't stop the kids from boogie boarding in ocean, running around in swim suits, getting buried in the sand and thanks to George C. we got a family photo.

After saying goodbye to our friends, we cleaned up and went to Pizza Hut, of all places, for lunch. I have to document it because our girls could, once again, could not stop eating. It was great. They are such slim pickers when it comes to eating and we rarely seem them do it, that it was as much fun to watch as the waves.
We then went and bought $2.99 kites and went to the most incredible place. It is called Assateague Island. It is a national park, which is great because we were able to get our book stamped. Do you have one of these? They are great and make a great gift! It is only $7.99! You can read all about it here.
This island is National Park that is a 37 mile island with Wild Horses running all along the beach. We flew our kites and I was happy to see our cheap kites soar. The fun part was when we got ready to leave we gave a kid on the beach our high flying kite for them to keep flying. I loved this photo of Jeff flying the kite.

Here is our family photo that we took ourselves.
Our hotel was all decorated for Christmas so it was fun walking through the lobby as we went in and out. We ate dinner at a real ice cream parlor with yummy homemade ice cream served in metal dishes. We were all so tired and came home to watch The Wizard of Oz.
It was a great weekend and if I kept a Gratitude journal with 5 things a day it would say.
1. living close to such amazing places
2. having the funds to do such things
3. having Jeff home for him to do them with us
4. Traveling safely
5. Incredible 70 degree weather.
You can see the rest of my 415 photos here. good thing for digital!