After a lazy morning (except for the hour long walk to get bagels. . .I walked there, called hubby to pick me and the bagels up!) of reading Sunday papers, having coffee and bagels, and taking Carolyn out for gym sneakers (with a stop at the animal rescue adoption area. . .AWWWKITTENSANDPUPPIES!) we finally managed to get everyone showered and dressed and headed off to Island Beach State Park for the annual Beach Plum Festival.

It was a nice little setup, although we got there too late to actually go pick beach plums. We were glad we’d driven only 20 minutes to get there, not nearly two hours. We wandered around, looked at the craft displays (briefly) and tasted beach plum jam, then headed up to Seaside Heights.

SH was having its seafood festival. Well, it was a lot like Bloomfield’s Harvest Festival, only with more actual crafts and fewer flea market booths, and seafood instead of zeppoles and sausage. We wandered up and down Grant Ave., decided to sit down at the Cantina on the boardwalk and have mexican and margaritas instead of standing and scarfing fried fish and beer. The weather at the beach was a bit cool for bathing suits, what with the stiff breeze and all, and the water looked. . .well. . .nice to look at. So we had a lovely time sitting by the second floor balcony and looking down on it all. Needless to say, getting onto the island, finding parking, and getting back onto the bridge was pretty darned easy.

Now? We’re waiting for the kids to finish practicing their music, and then we’re going to watch “Shaun of the Dead.” We need to get that and “Sin City” back to Netflix asap, because the kids now want to see “Tron” and “The Omen” (the original. I don’t think the remake, despite its meteoric trip from the front pages of the Entertainment section of the paper to obscurity, has made it to DVD yet.) If we get them in the mailbox tomorrow, we’ll have the new ones by Wednesday. I love Netflix.