Since Jonathan joined his current company, Nuvolo, he has worked closely with and become friends with one of his coworkers: Brandon Smith. And it just so happens that Brandon lives in Delaware with his wife, Nicole, and their two daughters: Jordan (8) and Emily (4). And we all wanted to meet (up) before we left D.C.
So, we decided to hit the beach in Delaware and invited the Smiths to join us. Unfortunately, Brandon was slated to drive to Boston that afternoon, but he invited us to tag along on a kids’ fishing event that they were going to in the morning: The Opie and Andy fishing tournament in Milton, Delaware.
We decided that, heck, we could do both!
So we got up early and drove the two hours over to Milton, DE. And, wow, Milton is an aggressively cute town (Jonathan’s words) with lots of adorable buildings and houses. And the park where the tournament was being held, Milton Memorial Park, was beautiful and had lovely views of the Broadkill river.
We arrived, got everyone all signed up, and then we went and found the Smiths. Brandon and his family had kindly brought enough fishing gear, including several kid-sized poles, for us to use during the tourny.
So we all got started fishing. And I’ll just relieve you of your suspense: nobody caught anything. Not a dang thing. And we were not the only ones, it was the same for everyone on the entire bank where we were fishing. Apparently that was usually a pretty good place to go fishing. Alas, not today. But, we still had a good time chatting and hanging out and there was a playground that the kids could go play at. And the kids got really good at casting. So we had a great time.
Obviously, we also got shaved ice. Cause we have our priorities straight. (Note: that was the only thing we had to pay for the entire day! That was a pleasant surprise!)
All the kids got their faces painted as well. That lady was legit. And so was her setup. It was pretty impressive to watch her work!
And around 11:30, we all got hot dogs and chips.
And then at noon, the event was all done. The largest fish caught that day was a 27″ catfish.
After the event ended, we let the kids play for a little while at the park and then we parted ways with our new friends, as Brandon had to drive to Boston, and we had to hit the beach.
SLAUGHTER BEACH
The beach we hit was Slaughter beach. The nice thing was that it was only a few miles from where we had been fishing. Once we got there, we did a deck change in the parking lot. Cause we’re classy folks.
And we made our way down to the beach.
It just so happens that it is Horseshoe Crab season right now and so there were a lot of them on the beach. Mostly dead ones…. 🤣🤣
But there were also apparently plenty of live ones in the water as well. I did not check for myself.
But, of course, our children will not be stopped, the three older kids all got in the water and had a great time swimming.
The twins also seemed to enjoy their time in the water. In particular, we were very happy to see Isaac plow right in. The last time we went to the beach, it took him a LONG time to work up to getting in the water. But this time, he got right in.
After they had been playing for a while, everyone was ready for snacks. And we were just chatting about how things were going, and how long we would stay. And we decided that we had had our fun and we were ready to head home.
The horseshoe crabs were kinda wigging certain people out. And the waves were a little bit small to play in because Slaughter beach is so far up the Delaware bay. And frankly, we were already kinda tired from being out in the sun all day.
So, we decided to pack it in. I employed my patented SpinCycle technique of getting excess water out of swimsuits. Here are some marketing stills:
We had dinner and introduced our children to 1/2 of Napoleon Dynamite and chucked them in bed.
So, I guess you could say it was the best day of our lives. Gosh!
