Thwarted

Traditions.

We all have them. Our families make so many memories because of the traditions that we establish and make sure to carry on.

Here at the beach there aren't too many traditions; there are certain pictures that we try to take each year, and one night we take the kids to get ice cream for dinner at Frozen Gold. Tonight was Ice Cream for Dinner night.

Once we made the decision to go, we loaded the kids in the car, and I'm not gonna lie: Wendy and I were totally psyched for ice cream for dinner. 

The place is not very close; its location is prime for the traffic leaving the beach. We go there anyway because it's delicious. And it is tradition.

As we neared Frozen Gold, Wendy said,"It doesn't look open. I hope it's open. It doesn't seem very open!" Sure enough, the parking lot was empty and as we pulled in, we saw the big "CLOSED" sign on the door. We had called another day, earlier in the week, in order to find out when they closed, and were told 7pm. It was 6:38pm! We were two sad grown-ups and six sad kids. 

We sat in the parking lot for a few minutes trying to come up with Plan B. There is another ice cream place closer to the condo, so we headed there. It's a small, walk-up-window kind of place. As we turned on the side street to park, though, we could see the line was very long, and we knew the no-see-ums were bad because we had stopped to get a movie from a RedBox and were kicking and swatting while we searched and then waited for a movie to pop out of the box (well, I was, anyway...I don't know that Wendy was looking like a poor excuse for a ninja as much as I was). We decided to head to the small market that was still on the way back to the condo and pick up a variety of Breyers ice cream, some squirt whipped cream, and whatever else we might see fit to create our own ice cream dinners back home. 

The small market had Butter Pecan and Strawberry Breyers ice cream.

Um. Yuck! The other brands were loaded with grody ingredients, which also yuck! Except for the Haagen-Dazs, but we were not about to pay $4 for the pints! We looked at each other feeling thwarted, but we were determined not to be defeated! 

We let the kids pick out two different novelties (ice cream sandwiches and fudgecicles) (which, of course, are not full of grody ingredients) (okay, just not as many) and considered it a win.

The kids got their ice cream for dinner. And never fear...we also made them a side of pasta. 

Here is the best part of getting thwarted tonight, though. We still have a tradition to uphold: ice cream from Frozen Gold. And that is something that we will not not do.

Tradition!