A little summertime fun.

     This week and next I have family visiting from out of state. It's an annual thing and I rather enjoy having everyone together. For the next two weeks we'll be running around, going to other relatives games and doing the cookout thing. Someplaces we head out to I have to write about because we just had such a good time as a large group.

     The first place we hit was Salisbury Beach in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The beach is clean and the water is fairly warm for the northeast. The things we liked about it most were the ability to park very close. When you have coolers, chairs and several children to be able to park and walk 10 yards to te beach is key. It's a pay to park place but its minimal at $10 and worth it in my opinion. Another thing we liked is access to food and snack places. The walk from the beach to the shops is about 3 minutes. All the shops there are friendly and helpful and fairly inexpensive. We bought 12 ice cream cones and spent less than 40 dollars. Not too bad considering its tourist season here. Now I will say this is not the worlds number one beach. It is very family friendly until a certain time then the night time crowd will roll in. That seems to be around 4:30 but great fun until then.

     Then second place we usually head out to is the candy store. Now the stores we go to have the nostalgic candy. Anything from your childhood you loved to get at the local store you can find at these two places. The first one is Pearl's candy in Salem, New Hampshire. It's got great parking and a good size location. There is plenty of room inside and the staff is great. The second place is Yummies up in Kittery, Maine. There is. Great selection of candy and other goodies like fudge. The downside is parking can be a struggle and the inside of the store can be difficult to walk in when the location becomes busy. Prices are about the same at ether location. The good thing for everyone is both locations have websites where you can shop until your heartache content.

     With all the talk if trials gone wrong and debt ceilings needing to be raised, I figured a little summertime reflection was needed. We get so wrapped in on day to day that the little things like going to the beach and having some candy can help relieve stress. It's also a great and fairly inexpensive way to keep the children entertained.

Websites to the places I mentioned today:

http://www.yummies.com/

http://www.pearlscandynh.com/

http://www.salisbury-beach.org/