On Monday morning, Michael woke up early and took Nora out to the beach to check out the sunrise.

Meanwhile, Vivienne and I continued snoozing away. Unfortunately, it ended up being too cloudy to see a real sunrise but Nora still got a kick out of it. I got to hear the whole story about the clouds as soon as they came inside (around 6:00 a.m.), so it was another early morning for all of us.

We decided to go out to breakfast again. This time, we ventured down to Layton’s. I had read that they have rainbow pancakes and I figured that our pancake-loving girls would get a kick out of that, particularly Nora. I was right. As soon as she heard “rainbow pancakes” as we reviewed the menu, she was decided.

After we ate, we swung by Food Lion for a few essentials. While there, we decided to pick up some ice cream for dessert that night, something we could eat out on our beach. Nora chose some cookie ice cream sandwiches, which I haven’t had in years.

Then we headed back to the condo. It was still pretty early but we figured we would take a walk out on the beach and get some photos before “officially” going to the beach. It was a beautiful sunny morning. Nora spent some time frolicking in the surf and sand. This girl LOVES the ocean.

We obviously took Vivienne to the beach with us when we went to the Outer Banks last summer, and at that time, she did well with the sand. She was just under a year old and was content to sit and run her fingers and toes through it. Still, we were a little nervous leading up to the Ocean City trip about whether or not Vivienne would tolerate the sand and water. Thankfully, she was great about it! She didn’t like to stand in the surf/waves on her own, but she loved going into the water with one of us. It appears she may be just as much of a beach lover as her big sister!

We eventually went inside and did the whole bathing suits and sunscreen routine. With the four of us, it seemed to take forever. Gotta make sure we have that sun protection, though!

We spent a few hours at the beach this day, again going back in sometime around lunch. Bathed the kids, made them lunch, showered ourselves, put Vivi down for a nap, relaxed.

We brought Play-Doh with us on this trip and it was a brilliant move, especially since we don’t play with it at home very often (although, Nora does get her share of experience with it at daycare). We had a princess Play-Doh set that we had never even opened that Nora got for her birthday, so it was “brand new” to her. I’m not kidding when I say she played (QUIETLY!) with this for like an hour and a half with very little help/participation from us. She loved it! Ahhhhh… vacation.

In the meantime, I finally got the call from my dermatologist that I had been awaiting for a week and a half. I had an appointment in the beginning of July for a check-up and to have her look at a stubborn spot on my face that I thought was maybe a little patch of psoriasis (which I have a minor case of) or eczema. She took a look at it and was like, “Hmm, that actually could be cancer.” NOT AWESOME. Anyway, she had done a biopsy of the spot—ON MY FACE—and I was waiting forever for the pathology results. So of course I get this call while I’m on vacation. At the beach, you know, where there is a lot of sun.

The spot is NOT cancer, but it is a pre-cancerous lesion called an actinic keratosis. I have to get it taken care of before it turns into a cancer like basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma. I’m glad it’s not actually cancer but it’s still a pain in the ass and I just want it off my face ASAP.

I “celebrated” the non-cancer diagnosis with a pre-dinner beer. Yes.

Once Vivienne woke up, we got ready to go to dinner. This night, we decided to walk to Abbey Burger Bistro, which was just a little less than a mile from our place. It was actually still quite hot out with glaring sun, so instead of sitting outside on their pretty looking patio—which looked to have very little shade at that time of day—we opted to sit inside. The atmosphere in there was pretty cool, though, so it was not much of a sacrifice.

I tried a new (to me) beer here—Wells Banana Bread Beer. Yum!

As you can imagine, the burger menu here is quite robust. Michael and I both felt like we couldn’t order anything BUT burgers so we did go with burgers. And they were both absolutely delicious. Michael says this was his favorite meal of the trip. I had a feeling it might end up that way since he mentioned how awesome it was about four times while we were still at the restaurant. LOL.

Our waitress forgot to give us a pen and the girls were getting antsy after the meal was over so we improvised and signed with a crayon. You gotta do what you gotta do, am I right?

Once back at the condo, we grabbed a beach blanket and the ice cream sandwiches and took the girls out for a treat on the beach. It was a MESS and Vivienne ate a good deal of sand with her ice cream but they loved it and that’s all that really matters.

More pics on the beach in the evening hours. Love.

We made our way back up to our condo and got the girls ready for bed. Pajamas, teeth brushing, books, songs. You parents out there know the drill. Tucked them in and shut ourselves out onto the balcony again to enjoy the last bit of daylight looking out over the beach and ocean.

We may not “do” much on these beach vacations but they sure are wonderful.

I was going to try to combine at least two days of activity and photos into each post but I think this one is long enough already. Again, more to come!

Ah, vacation. My little family of four has just returned from a week in Ocean City, Maryland. It was so nice to get away and spend some extra time together. No agendas, no stress—just wake up each day and fly by the seat of our pants.

Just FUN.

One thing that Michael and I did set out to do on this trip was to take photos. Lots and lots of photos. I’m happy to say we succeeded. So much so that I’m going to need to break up this recap into multiple parts just so it’s not a mile long.

We left home around 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 11. The drive was supposed to take us around 7.5 hours. We figured we’d make it in maybe 8.5 hours with traffic and stops.

Wrong. It took us 10 hours. Womp womp. And we only stopped once! As it turned out, traffic was a beast. Having never been to Ocean City (or anywhere in that area) before, we had no idea how bad it was going to be. We hit several areas of really bad stop-and-go traffic on our way down. First in Pennsylvania, in the general vicinity of Philadelphia. We actually requested a detour from our GPS to get us out of that mess, which worked. But then we hit a long stretch of bad traffic in Delaware, once we got down closer to the beaches. We made it through that, too, but then once we got on Route 90 in Maryland to head east to Ocean City—this stretch was really only about 8-10 miles at most—we were INCHING along. It was pretty torturous. I’ll admit I do not handle traffic very well at all. It drives me batty.

Thankfully, our kids were freaking ANGELS and did fabulously. It would’ve been SO.MUCH.WORSE if the girls had been losing their minds in the backseat. It was funny, actually, because once we did finally get to our condo, we told Nora repeatedly how proud we were of her. (Vivienne, too, but she doesn’t understand as well. Ha.) We told her how wonderful it was that she did not complain once the entire ride. Her response? “I didn’t complain because we were going to the beach!” So the whole time, she just had the end goal in mind. Life lessons from a 4 year old, I’m telling you.

Once on the island, our first stop was the rental office to get our keys. We found our rental through Homeaway.com. It was called Breakaway East 506, and managed by a company called Vantage Realty. Once we had the check in packet from Vantage, we headed north to our condo. We parked, we got ourselves and a few belongings up to the 5th floor. We unlocked the condo and stepped inside to find a place that was completely dark. All of the shades and curtains were drawn closed. I thought it was a bit odd, but figured it was to keep the place cool. We opened everything up and the place just looked… not nice. Not like the photos we had seen. It took me a few minutes to put my finger on it. I had to pee really bad from the longer-than-expected drive so I visited the bathroom pretty much right away. As I was doing so, I looked around me and I saw dirt and hair in the sink. And then I saw a nasty, dirty tub.

It hit me. The place hadn’t been cleaned!

I walked out of the bathroom and took a closer look around the main living space. The glass-top coffee table was COVERED in fingerprints and smudges, as were the stainless steel appliances. There was visible dirt and sand on the floor. We went into the bedroom to find the bed completely unmade, pillows and comforter piled up in the center of the bed. And the second bathroom was equally as gross as the first.

I was FURIOUS. I tried calling the Vantage office right away but unfortunately, we had arrived at the office to pick up our keys right at 5:00 p.m., when they were closing. So by now it was almost 6:00 and no one was answering the phones. I tried getting in touch with the rep we worked with to book the place, but I got an out-of-office reply that she was on vacation. Of course. They had given us a packet of information upon check-in and there was an “emergency” number. I called it, but the recording was very explicit about what it was for—fire, flooding, etc. So I hung up. We debated for a bit about what to do. I didn’t even want to be in this place in its current condition, let alone SLEEP there. Ultimately, we decided to call the emergency number again and opt to speak to someone. Thankfully, the woman I spoke to gave me the number to call for cleaning services—which was the original rental number, but a certain extension that remains open until 7:00 p.m. Don’t you think that would be helpful to include on the materials?? But anyway…

I called the cleaning services extension and sure enough, someone picked up. She told me that per the rental agreement I signed, they actually have until 7:00 p.m. to clean the place. But still, they are usually cleaned earlier, so she asked me to give her a few minutes to check on the status and that she would call me back. A few minutes later, she did call back and said that the cleaning company was “just running behind” and that they were coming out to clean the place. She said to “move our belongings aside” so that the people could effectively clean, to which I responded that we hadn’t even bothered to unpack anything yet because we were so put off by the place.

We decided to leave and go grab dinner somewhere. As we were leaving the parking lot, we saw the cleaning service pull in. Nice. Now, before I move on to anything else, I’ll just say that by the time we got back from dinner, the place WAS clean. As soon as we opened the door again, we could smell that it was clean. It smelled good, it looked good, it “felt” good, it was everything we would’ve expected it to be to begin with. Ultimately, we were really happy with it. But while I understand that the rental agreement gives them until 7:00 p.m. to clean it (I admittedly did not read it that closely to start!), I am FLOORED that we were allowed to check in to the place without it being cleaned. Even if we were given the keys—great, but at least tell us, “Hey, you might want to go grab dinner first because your place hasn’t been cleaned!” I mean, who wants to walk into a place you’ve paid good money for to find it filthy from the previous guests?!

I believe it was probably a rare incident and we just had bad luck, but it was not the way we wanted to start our vacation after 10 hours in the car. But in the end, it was thankfully a relatively minor inconvenience and it worked out for the best. Honestly, it wasn’t enough to deter me from recommending the place for rental, because it was so great the rest of the time. I’ll also say that after living in the place for a week, it’s easy to mess it up, so I don’t think the people who stayed before us were particularly gross and/or messy people, either. It’s a condo right on the beach, with a lot of sand, etc. It gets dirty. In fact, when we left it, I said to Michael, “I certainly hope whoever is staying here next doesn’t come in here to THIS filth, either!” You can see from the pics above that it was a really cute place, recently remodeled (lots of IKEA!), and generally well kept. We didn’t have any other complaints.

Switching gears…

Thankfully, before our trip, we had received many great comments and recommendations for Ocean City—from blog readers (thank you!), and a few friends, too. I had compiled all of it into a “CHEAT SHEET” that we printed and carried with us. It categorized the restaurants by breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert/treats and also by location (proximity to the condo). I also included short comments about each one based on what people said about it, reviews, etc. It was really nice because when we were getting ready to go out somewhere, we didn’t have to spend much time debating (Do we feel like driving that far? What about somewhere we can walk to? I’m in the mood for a burger, do they have burgers? Is a good restaurant? Kids menu? That sort of thing). It was all vetted in advance and it was a major timesaver for us on the trip.

So that first night, we headed to a restaurant down south a bit. It was called Big Peckers. Like CHICKEN, FOLKS. Chicken. But there are definitely restaurant owners in Ocean City with sick senses of humor, I’ll say that much. :)

They had a cool outdoor seating area with gliding chairs/tables and canopies on each one. The food was “typical” American restaurant grub—burgers, sandwiches, and the like. We took a chance and ordered only one kid’s meal for the girls to share here, which worked out because the portions (for both adults and children) were large.

Afterward, we felt the girls deserved a special treat after their stellar behavior on the car ride down so we stopped at Justine’s Ice Cream Parlour to get them a couple of kiddie dishes. We took them to go since it was getting late and we were anxious to get back to the CLEAN condo, get everything unpacked and get the girls to bed.

{Nora, happy to just FINALLY be at the beach!}

We woke up pretty early on Sunday morning, all of us. It was a nice, sunny day, and it was great to open up our curtains and see the ocean right from our place. Overall, we spent a ton of time out on our balcony and I’m so glad we had it!

A quick note about sleeping arrangements: The couch in the living room was a fold-out, so Nora slept on that every night. We were good about folding it back up every morning to turn it back into a couch so we had the living space back. Vivienne slept in a pack-in-play set up next to the fold-out. It worked out pretty well. Every night, we would put them to bed and go out on the balcony with a couple of beers and relax while they fell asleep. Eventually, we’d call it a night ourselves and sneak past them to go back to our room. We also had a TV back in our room and a half bath right off of the bedroom, so we didn’t have to “sacrifice” anything by having the girls sleep in the living room, really. We didn’t have any problems with disturbing them, either.

Anyhow, that first morning, we decided to get dressed and head out to grab breakfast somewhere. Fractured Prune donuts came highly recommended by multiple people, and there was a location very close to our condo, so we opted to check that out.

We decided to get a half dozen donuts to share, all different flavors—Banana Nut Bread, Blueberry Hill, French Toast, Strawberry Shortcake, OC Sand, and Rolo. They come out hot and fresh, and they were delicious. Big hit all around.

We went back “home” after that, relaxed a little bit, and got ready for our first outing to the beach.

I didn’t take our DSLR camera with us to the beach that day, as I was paranoid. You’ll see that as we progress through the trip recap, I got more brave the following days. :)

Up north, where we stayed (we were on 134th Street), it was far from the boardwalk and a bit more laidback. Now, if I’m comparing beaches, I would still say that this one was pretty busy compared to where we stayed last year in the Outer Banks, which was more remote (Rodanthe). Instead, I’d say Ocean City is more similar to Virginia Beach or Myrtle Beach. The nice thing was that where we were, it was almost all families. And what was really nice was that we met a family on that first day who we stuck with for the rest of the trip!

After we were there for a little while, we noticed two little girls who looked to be around Nora’s age. We ended up striking up a conversation with them and their parents. It turned out they were from Scotland, visiting family in Maryland (so they were in Ocean City with the girls’ grandparents and uncle as well). Their girls were 8 and 5, Lily and Ellie, and the girls played together—to some degree—on the beach every morning. It was so nice for all of us parents to have them help keep each other occupied and having fun.

Starting that first day, we established a bit of a routine—mornings spent at the beach until 12-1:00ish, then showers and lunch, then naptime for Vivienne while Michael, Nora and I relaxed. Then dinner and whatever else.

That first night, we headed wayyyyy south to the boardwalk. We parked around 15th Street and walked down the boardwalk to 1st Street, where we cut across the island to the bayside to eat at de Lazy Lizard. We were told that it is very family friendly, which we found to be true. It also has a really, really cool atmosphere overall.

When we arrived, they asked which side of “the beach” we wanted to sit on. We opted for “Kid Beach” because there was a playground over on that side. On the opposite side, mind you, there was a really kickass looking bar for grown-ups. Regardless, it was great. The tables were situated in the sand, there was a great view of the bay, palm trees, etc. We ordered drinks and our food and then Michael and I took our beers and the kids and we let them play on the playground while we waited for our food.

The food was actually pretty fast, and decent. We again opted to have the kids share a kid’s meal here—cheese quesadillas with a side of apple slices—and that didn’t work out as well here. The quesadilla was pretty small. Perfect for one kid, really, but oops… not for two. I had half a mind to ask the waitress to bring another one out, but we decided it was fine since we’d share some of our meals as well, and likely pick up some ice cream for them on the boardwalk on the walk back up to our car. You’ll see that a theme of our vacation was also DESSERT EVERY NIGHT. Haha! That’s what vacation is for, right??

The lighting was really nice so I snapped a bunch of pics of the kids at dinner…

Vivienne tried an Old Bay chip from Michael’s plate, and was NOT A FAN… LOL

We let the kids play on the playground for a bit longer after dinner, while Michael and I finished our beers. We both thought that this place would’ve been even more awesome if both kids were old enough to play on the playground by themselves. It was nicely fenced in so no real worry of kids escaping or getting lost anywhere, and had they been old enough, we could’ve sent them to the playground and enjoyed the quiet of our table together. A little “free babysitting” if you will. So, something to think about for those of you who have older kids—go here! Definitely!

We eventually loaded the kids back up in the double stroller and walked back toward the ocean side so we could hit the boardwalk again on our way back north to 15th (where we parked). We parked on a side street, by the way, for free. It was a little challenging to find a spot that night (a Sunday), but it worked out.

Along the way, we dropped into Icy Stone Creamery to get the girls ice cream cones. Nora chose peanut butter, and I ordered “cinnamon batter” for Vivienne. I helped get her cone under control before handing it over to her and IT WAS DELICIOUS. So good. Highly recommend.

By the time we got back to our condo, it was fairly late (for the kids, anyway, who normally go to bed at 7:30) so we did bedtime pretty much right away. All in all, a good first full day at the beach.

More to come!