4th at the Beach

Friday night, after the races, we headed to meet the rest of the crew at the condo.

This year, the crowd was slim, because Uncle Adam’s gang was in Michigan for the week. We missed them, but the fun had to go on. ;)

Saturday we went to breakfast at the pier and beached the day away.

That evening, we all went to dinner together before the guys went their own way to the races. We girls (& Tucker) hit the new outlet mall. We’re excited to have some new shopping options at the beach for when the sun’s not out, or it’s the off-season and we can have an excuse to drive over. ;)

AB picked out a new backpack and lunchbox, but Mamie could find nothing that she couldn’t live without at the Vera Bradley outlet. There were no unicorns, or kitties, or even glitter at VB. What was I thinking? She did, however, spot this adorable and oh-so-Mamie watermelon purse in the window of another store and decided THAT was the item she HAD to have.

Tucker was thrilled to shop at the ToysRUs outlet, and found a RC monster truck that served as the perfect consolation prize for not getting to go to the races with the big boys. It’s hard to be little, but think you’re big. ;)

I was excited to see the new outlets have a “Great American Cookie” store. I remember the GAC in the Oaks mall when I was a kid. In fact, I remember the trauma of getting my ears pierced when I was 5 was made a little better when my Mom bought the big bucket of mini-cookies for us afterward. ;) All the GAC’s around us have closed down, so when we go off and find one, we always hit it. DW and I love the pecan chocolate chip cookies, but occasionally we’ll get a cookie-cake slice to relive birthdays gone-by. Ha. (He loved a cookie cake from GAC when he was a kid- and most birthdays I make him a cookie-cake because it’s always what he wanted growing up.) ;)

I’ve spent an entire paragraph side-tracked about cookies. Imagine that.

After shopping, we hit Krispy Kreme- because tradition- and we needed to secure breakfast for the next morning. ;)

We headed back home on Sunday, but only after we’d had our donut. ;)

The tradition of spending the race weekend at Pappy’s beach is always a fave.

~amw~