Old Orchard Beach

“Three trucks and a parrot?” I question Bob after looking into the bag of toys he and Matt packed for our vacation to Maine.

“I let him pick out his own toys,” he replies without a hint of regret in his voice. We are already on the highway so it is too late to turn back now.

Traditionally we like to stop at the York Wild Kingdom Zoo on our way to the hotel but because it started to rain we instead drove to a Children’s Museum in Portland. It was perfect for Matthew because there was a 25-foot fire truck for kids to dress up as firefighters and play on. He had a lot of energy to work off after eating more munchkin donuts during the two hour car ride than Bob and I combined.

When we left the museum I dragged us all to the LL Bean outlet across the street and bought the most adorable footed pajamas with sea creatures on them for Matthew. “See my jammies?” Matthew asked us every ten seconds or so while carrying the shopping bag himself to the car. Once he got settled into his car seat he took them out of the bag, “there they are!”

This year we are wiser and chose to stay in a bigger hotel room with an eat-in kitchen and room for Matthew to roam and play with his toys on the floor. Last year we stayed in a room half the size with the bare necessities which made for one cranky toddler on a short fuse. Once we had unpacked Matthew started to refer to it as “Sarah’s House” associating it with our recent trip to Vermont.

“Do you want to go home to Matthew’s house?” Bob asks Matthew who is curled up under the blankets in his pack n play and flipping through a book.

“Matthew’s house is Sarah’s house,” Matthew replies without looking up from his book about a frog driving a school bus.

By the following morning the rain stops and so we walk along the ocean on our way back to the hotel after eating breakfast at a local eatery. Matthew, dressed in cargo pants and a t-shirts splashes around in the chilly water and giggles when the undertow covers his feet in sand. Best of all, a bulldozer happens to drive by when we are making our way back towards the street. I hate to admit it but Matthew may have been more impressed with the bulldozer than the trip to the zoo we took later that morning.

By that afternoon we were back at the beach covered in sand and salt water, and enjoying our summer vacation like no other before. The three of us quickly fall into a routine of spending our afternoons at the beach, jumping in waves, flying kites, exploring tide pools. In the evenings we spent a lot of time on the boardwalk, eating ice cream, shopping, and watching Matthew ride a fire truck kiddie ride nearly a dozen times. On our last night we watch fireworks on the beach or as Matthew called them, “fire truck works”.

Bob and I have always said that when we had children we would take them on vacation at every summer at Old Orchard Beach. We first stayed here as a couple in October of 2002. Years later Bob proposed to me on the same beach where in 2009 we would sit with our son and watch fire truck works. I love it here.