memorial day.

Memorial day this year consisted of cookouts and sparklers and cream soda and patchwork quilts and everything else good Summer holidays are supposed to include. 'Patriotic' holidays always make me really nostalgic, every fourth of july week of my childhood was spent in Ocean City, Md, a beach town made up of amusement parks, rows of hotels, a striped umbrella-covered beach, and a boardwalk filled with taffy shoppes, ferris wheels and carousels. Think of Atlantic city circa 1920s or the fictional town of Amity and that's Ocean City.

My entire family- aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents- would pack up their cars and make the three hour drive, where we all rented our own beach houses in the same little neighborhood. The week was spent riding carnival rides and playing arcade games on the boardwalk, eating cotton candy, watching fireworks over the bay, laying on blankets in the grass, swimming in the ocean, and eating strawberries until our little fingers were stained red. All the perfect things that make up childhood Summers.  I'll have to dig up some photos of those Summers, because that place really was magical! I heard it's kind of taken a bad turn over recent years, which makes me sad because I want that place to always be how I remember it. (or like this:)