Ocean City Vacation, Part 1

Last week, Kyle, Peyton and I took a vacation to Ocean City. I'm going to do this post in two installments, since we were there for seven days. There is a lot to tell and a lot of pictures to post. I don't want to overwhelm anyone!

We left our house headed for Ocean City a little after noon on Sunday. Normally, Peyton will eat his lunch around 12:00 and then take his nap. We wanted to leave around nap time so that he would hopefully sleep a good portion of the usually three hour ride. When Peyton rides in the car, he literally never stops talking. I don't think either of us wanted to listen to him talking for three hours straight!

Peyton fell asleep about an hour into the ride. There was no traffic, except for a little slow down at the Bay Bridge, but we have an M-Tag, so even that was just a super small delay, since we were able to go into a special lane for tag holders. It only took us about two and a half hours to make it to Ocean City.

One of Kyle's friends owns a condo down there, so we rented that from him for the entire week. It was a very nice two bedroom, two bathroom place with two living rooms, a kitchen, and nice-sized balcony. The condos are right on the beach and had several amenities, including an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, large playground, three tennis courts, a basketball court, saunas, an arcade, and a pool table. Here is a picture of the complex from the outside, and the views from our balcony.

Peyton liked sitting outside on the balcony because he got to see lots of airplanes and boats go by. Airplanes would pull advertisement banners down the coast, with one flying by every 15-30 minutes. Two different boat companies offered rides down the coast. They would ride by and then turn around just a little past our place and then ride by again. So Peyton got to see even more boats than planes.

After we got settled in our room, we headed out to get some dinner. We ate at the Dough Roller, which is the big pizza chain in OC. After that, we drove down to the inlet so that we could check out the boardwalk and let Peyton ride some rides. We strolled around looking at the rides, pausing at each to ask Peyton if he wanted to ride it. He said, "NO!" to each. Finally, there were some boats that he said he wanted to ride. Kyle ran to the ticket counter to buy enough tickets for him to ride, but by the time he got back, Peyton changed his mind and was afraid to ride the boats. Since we had bought the tickets, we tried some more to convince Peyton to ride something. Eventually, he agreed to ride the firetrucks. As you can see, he didn't like it very much. Each time he rode past us, he'd put his arms up and yell "Up!" for us to pick him up. He made it through the ride though.

We gave up on rides and just walked the boardwalk. I think we went about 15 blocks. Peyton liked looking at the water and saying, "Ocean!" We stopped along the way and got some ice cream. Peyton enjoyed it. (So did I!)

After our snack, we turned around and walked back to the car. We were all a little beat from the drive earlier in the day, so we just drove back to the condo to get to sleep.

Monday morning, we woke up and walked over to the beach. It took us so long to get ready and we carried so much stuff over with us. We had two beach bags full of toys and towels, the camera, a beach ball, and our blanket. Luckily, the beach was just outside of our complex, so we didn't have to go too far.

We played at the beach for a little while. I tried to take Peyton down to the water, but he was afraid. I held him and let my feet get wet by a wave. That water was COLD! He was still a little nervous, so we returned to our blanket and played in the sand a little more. Here are some pictures.

Next we went back inside and we all took baths/showers. Then it was time for lunch. Kyle pulled up a list of restaurants on the navigation system and chose to go to Arby's. Well, we drove like 10 miles to get to this "Arby's" and it wasn't even there! It didn't even look like one ever was there. Kyle was pretty bummed. So then we kept on driving and saw a Panera, which is one of my favorite places! We went into Panera, but Peyton didn't want to eat a sandwich, so I ordered my food and then we went to a Wendy's next door for Kyle and Peyton to get lunch. Then we went back to the condo for Peyton to take a nap.

When Peyton woke up, we drove up to Rehobeth Beach in Deleware. It's about a half-hour ride, mostly because the speed limit is 35 mph much of the way and you have to watch out for those DE cops because they like to write speeding tickets.

We ate dinner at a place called Stone Grill. Then we walked over to the boardwalk to see if Peyton wanted to ride any rides. We checked out each ride, and Peyton said that he wanted to ride several of them. So, we bought some tickets and took him to the boats, which he wanted to ride first. He loved it! (It's pretty neat, because these same rides were there back in the day when Jeremy and I were little, and I know pictures exist of us riding these rides, just like Peyton.)

Then he rode the firetrucks, and liked that too. He rang the bell and steered with the wheel.

Next Peyton wanted to ride the swings. He liked that one so much, he rode two times in a row.

Then he rode the trucks, which he also enjoyed enough to warrant two rides.

Finally, Peyton and I rode the Paratrooper together. That was one of my favorite rides when I was younger. It goes pretty high and Peyton was a little uneasy at first, but then he loosened up and I think he liked it.

After our ride tickets were gone, Kyle and Peyton got some ice cream and Peyton played a game. He won a stuffed banana (which he is strangling in the picture below).

I'm so glad that Peyton ended up liking the rides. It just makes me so happy to see him having fun. It was getting late and past Peyton's bedtime, so we drove back to the condo and put him to bed.

Tuesday was forecast to be a little rainy. We just hung around in the room in the morning and played with the beach ball and other toys that Peyton brought with him. Then we went to lunch at Burger King and Peyton took his nap. After that, we drove back to Rehobeth to go shopping at the outlets. First we had dinner at Applebee's. There is no sales tax in DE and there are tons of stores, so we bought a lot of stuff. Kyle got a ton of clothes, Peyton and I got a few things each and then Kyle forced me to buy a Coach purse. We went into that Coach store three times before I agreed to buy it. We even had Peyton in his car seat and we were ready to leave the parking lot, when Kyle dragged me back into the store to buy it. We even got a little Christmas shopping finished. Peyton did not enjoy being in the stroller so long and was getting a little cranky after a 30 minute car ride, dinner, and three hours of shopping, so we finally headed back to OC for the night.

I'll wrap up the recap of our vacation in my next post. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat.