Trip to "The Beach"

One of our office's (awesome) ultrasonographers told me this week that she always finds it odd that patients from Myrtle Beach, when asked where they are from, always just say "from the beach." Which is funny because our city (to which they come for tertiary medical care) also has a beach. In fact, multiple beaches. As does, in fact, any coastal city. When our ultrasonographer said this, it made me remember how my grandmother, who used to live very close to Myrtle Beach, always referred to it the same way, as "The Beach."

Anyways, last Sunday we took a trip to The Beach. Our city has tons to do, lots of culture, aquarium, kids' activities, and (yes) even beaches. However, Myrtle Beach has what we do not: lots of cheap cheesy mini-golf, fried seafood, waterslides and amusement parks. So we took off after church and drove the 2 hours to Myrtle Beach. The drive is beautiful, and it's really quite an easy trip.

We took a small detour to the Anthropologie store in a ritzy outdoor mall (yeah, that was for me...obviously). Then we ate (you guessed it) fried seafood and finally hit up a pretty cool amusement park/boardwalk/cheesy family entertainment outdoor wonderland. We're generally pretty cheap, but we splurged for the "all you can ride" bracelets for Rose & Lucy, and Sheref took Ella on a 90 minute (and $50!!) Magic Quest thing. Apparently this Magic Quest is all the rage among 5th graders. So Ella had a unicorn magic adventure (or something like that...it involved a $20 magic wand...that's all I really understood), while Charlie and I followed the twins around while they rode ride after ride after ride. It was 100 degrees, so I was pretty impressed with my parental patience for 2 hours of rides (if you know me in person, this is quite a feat).

The kids had a great time, and frankly so did the adults.

3 cuties

Airplane ride

Merry-go-round

A ride the twins called the "Cupcake Ride"

"What about me?"

Chuckles in the cheap-o quarter bus ride...which he LOVED