At the Beach

In between softball games, beaseball games, piano recitals, and traffic jams, we managed to squeeze in a few minutes with the Atlantic Ocean. Alex, Kenzie and I drove down Friday afternoon. We stayed in a condo in north Ocean City, only a few minutes away from the Delaware fields where the softball tournament was being held. This weekend also happened to be hot-rod weekend in OC. There were more souped up old cars around than anything else. I never got into those things, but obviously many poeple are hooked on the old, powerful, very noisy machines that suck up as much money as kids do. The OC police were very busy trying to control a situation where everyone seemed to want to show off their shiny metal babies.

Back to us. Friday afternoon, the three of us walked the beach, and Kenzie collected shells. Friday night, we walked the boardwalk. I love this time of year in the resort town. It's not quite open for the season, but there's enough to do and see to keep me entertained. The hot-rodders spend most of their time cruising up and down Coastal Highway, so the beach and boardwalk were essentially desserted.

On Saturday, softball ended early for us, so on Saturday afternoon we met one of the families from the team, who were staying nearby, and went to the beach. I couldn't let the kids show me up, so we all went swimming in the frigid Atlantic. It's amazing how cold that water was.

Also on Saturday afternoon, Vicki brought the rest of the crew down, after Connor's piano thing. She got caught in a ton of traffic trying to get there, and finally arrived after about 4 hours in the minivan. It should have taken less than 2 hours. She was a little upset. The kids, as usual, were pretty bad in the van, at least until they realized that they'd be sitting on the side of the road if they didn't shut up.

Our first game on Sunday was not until 2 pm so we had all morning to have fun. Naturally, we had go swimming again. I didn't go in as much as I did on Staurday. The tide was very low, so we could play on the sand bars. They won't be there in the summer, so that on of the cool things about swimming in the ocean this time of year. For some of our kids, this was their first look at the beach and the ocean. I think they had a good time.