Making Memories that last Forever!!

My family has gone to the beach since I was a little girl. We always went to Rehoboth Beach and I'm not sure how my parents managed it to this day as we didn't have a lot of money. My father was a teacher and my mother was a homemaker. We always stayed in the same place; a small trailor- like cottage that smelled funny and was very cramped. Yet, we had the time of our lives and great memories that we all laugh about to this day. We remember going crabbing and having the crab run across the kitchen floor. We roll with laughter as we recall my sister and I taking out a rather large lady at the beach, wearing a flowered bathing cap. We washed up on shore on our raft by the force of a wave. She was unable to see us in the sea foam and we had no way of stopping the momentum as we crashed into her legs and sent her rolling in the waves. I can picture it like it was yesterday! We also spent a day going to Ocean City and we played the ten cent cranes. I now take my children to the same place and unbelievably, we can still play the original, wooden, ten cent cranes. The prizes in them are plastic "junk", but to me they are treasures of memories and it is still the thrill of winning the prize with the antique claw. My children joke with me every year and say that the cranes are gone. I tell them that I will cry when that happens and they just roll their eyes. They may say that, but I know it is a memory that they will always have as well. My children are now sixteen and thirteen and have gone to this same beach every year along with my parents, my sister and her family, my brother and his wife, and sometimes my grandmother. We have more stories that we can even begin to tell from the time they were little and my son refused to touch the sand and sat on a beach chair the entire time until last year when my daughter caught a five foot shark by herself. Speaking of sharks, I have to tell you about the day that I was attacked by a shark. Well, not really.... I was standing in the surf, because to go in any further would be taking a chance on encountering some form of marine life hitting your legs and in the murky water where visibility is zero, you have no idea what it could be. So, I am standing there on patrol for the safety of my children in the water and a shark gets washed in and wraps itself between my feet! Yes, a real, live sand shark! It is flopping around and in my state of shock and panic, I yell SHARK!! Now, the people in the water do not yet see what I see and when they hear me yell SHARK, they immediately clear the water and everyone comes charging in. Eventually, they see the shark and surround it to get a closer look. My nephew, who is out of breath from trying to walk on water to get out of the shark infested waters, is furious when he sees that it is a two foot baby sand shark. Oh, did I forget to mention it was just a baby? I say to him, well I may have saved your life because he has a mother out there somewhere. My family abused me all week long about this.