Visiting the beach on a January day

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Today we had such a mild weather day.  We knew that it was going to be about 60 degrees and we actually had no plans for the day, so we decided to have a “family fun day”.  Marc & I couldn’t agree on a couple things: I wanted to bring the family to the Grounds for Sculpture so the kids could run around a bit, but Marc thought that seemed to boring.  He wanted to check out Seaside and visit with some old friends, but I thought that sounded too boring.  So we agreed to go down to Atlantic City and take the kids to the Rainforest Café (which is Rayna’s favorite place)

We stopped at an estate sale (which is one of our favorite Saturday things to do) and something kind of weird happened.  A lady was in the house holding up a t-shirt for “Willing Hearts Dalmatian Rescue” which is the rescue that we got Buddie from.  Also, Buddie came all the way from Reading area, so it’s not like we were just around the corner from that area.  It was so very random!  To think that Buddie Love has lived in two homes ever, and one of them is ours and one of them was this lady’s was unbelieveable, no!?

After the estate sale we decided to check on our place.  We haven’t seen it since Hurricane Sandy hit.  We’ve seen pictures of the area and one of them even had our house in the background.  Since we are just renters we weren’t allowed much info on its condition, but everything seemed fine.  We got out and looked around, and didn’t see much out of place:

Found some random debris in the yard

Then we walked up to the beach to see what the shoreline looked like.  Everything was pretty much the same, except the entrance to the beach was completely gone.  There’s usually a little footpath and it was gone.  I guess when they plowed the streets of sand they closed off our entrance.  We just had to scale it (which I did such a bad job with! OMG I’m so out of shape!) and then we enjoyed walking on the sand for a bit.

Baby Marc is really into saying "Cheese!" for pictures

Then we were off to the Rainforest Café in Atlantic City.  There’s two Rainforest Cafes in NJ, one in Edison and the one in Atlantic City.  There used to be one in Philly at the Franklin Mills Mall.  I loved going there when I was in high school.  I wish it was still there!  Anywho, parking at the Trump Marina was only $5 and we walked right into the Rainforest Café, no waiting!  I guess that’s the good thing about going in January

We made our usual request to “not sit near the gorilla” and we ate lunch.  Baby Marc seemed to really enjoy it too:

Chocolate milk!

It was so dark in there for photos, and when I used the flash on my phone it was a white-out, so my pics are dark.  But I think you can see the excitement level

We were seated right under the stars

So “family fun day” was a success.  The only downside was not finding a place to buy fudge.  Normally there’s fudge/taffy shops “down the shore” are a dime a dozen, but I guess that rule doesn’t apply in January.