Back where I left off on the night of Day 3, we were about to play the Name Game with the group. For anyone not familiar with the Name Game, the way it works is everyone takes small pieces of paper and writes down names (on our first round, as kind of a test we had everyone write five names - on five pieces of paper). Then all of the papers are put in a bowl and mixed up. Then the first player takes the bowl and one at a time picks out random pieces of paper and tries to give clues to the person next to him/her. If the 2nd person guesses correctly, both players get a point. You can't pass, so if you don't know the actual person on the paper you can give clues to the name in other ways to get the person to say the first and last name. For example, if the name was Bob Denver, and the person giving the clues didn't know who that was (I know, that would be sad) the clue giver could say "First name is what you do when you get apples with your mouth from a tub of water, and the last name is the large city in Colorado." The idea is to write names in the "public domain" (as Debbie put it, followed by sarcastic comments from our kids on her "fancy" use of words). However, the definition of public domain clearly differed based on who was writing the names. For Amanda, that meant writing down her family members. For Debbie that meant writing down names of characters in children's books (Crysanthemum), children's TV characters (Oobi) or wacky 6-year-olds on TLC (Honey Boo Boo), all of which elicited groans from the crowd. And for Ethan that meant trying to stump everyone with names that maybe one or two of us would get (TJ Houshmandzadeh, Sebastian Janikowski, Jawaharlal Nehru, well you get it).
As kind of expected, the game resulted in a lot of laughs, and a few disgruntled players ("Dad, you [stink]" or "I don't want him giving me clues anymore!"). But overall the first round was such a success that we played a second round with 10 names each (and also played Saturday night). Here are some of the names that were played, in addition to the ones already mentioned: Barack Obama (many, many times), Joe Biden, Mitt Romney (no love for Paul Ryan, maybe if Romney wins he'll get a shout-out next time), Sonic the Hedgehog, old annual favorite Jason Beeferman (with his sister Monica and father Bruce added in at least once each - sorry Sheila, no mention), Dr. Dre, LeBron James, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Donny Osmond (the cause of comments from the younger crowd of "Who's that?"), Jesus & John Smith (those two names written 5 times each in one round by Ethan who wanted to prove a point that he could write names that people would get - oy), the entire Tucker clan (thanks to Amanda), cute couple Justin Beiber & Selena Gomez, and the one that has already become legendary "the opposite of crab" which according to clue-giver Brian means Lobster. Both nights ended well past the kids', and adults', bedtimes after midnight, but it was worth it for the laughs and memories.
Friday was a perfect beach day. By the time everyone woke up and had breakfast, we were all out at the beach by around 11:30, where almost everyone spent some time in the water, either boogie boarding, skim-boarding or just riding waves. Amanda gets the "brave girl" award for all of the time she spent in the water battling pretty strong waves. And I in the lead for the "Dad of the Year" for all of the time I spent in the cold water with Amanda battling pretty strong waves. Although, I have to say that after the initial cold shock, the water was very enjoyable.
We headed back up to the house at around 2:00 for lunch, and after eating and convincing the lazy kids to get back out the beach, headed back out where we stayed until around 7:00. The time on the beach was filled by more swimming, a pretty lame attempt at beach volleyball and a spirited game of football that pitted the Volks vs. the Tuckers, with the dads acting as QBs (no way were going to run around). I won't give you all of the details on the game, but suffice it to say that the guy who grew up in New England played like Tom Brady, and the lefty QB threw the ball like Tim Tebow and got ripped in the media by one of his WRs (the smaller one). You figure out who was who.
When we were all showered and got most of the sand out of us, we headed to dinner at old favorite Blue Fish Grill, where we had a nice dinner (helped by the fact that the kids sat at their own table). After dinner we headed home for the 2nd installment of the Name Game and bed.
Saturday started out a little ominously, with cloud cover and a lot of wind. The kids were not too secretly hoping the beach day would be a wash out so we could head to a movie, but alas around noon the sun broke through and we had basically a repeat of Friday. The only difference was that we switched up the football teams a little (I traded Ethan for Ryan), and Team Tebow won on a last second TD, which then resulted in Team Brady's younger WR unnecessarily ripping his QB. Let's just say I know how Brady felt in the last Super Bowl. If one of my WRs (the taller one) had held on to a perfect TD throw we would have won. But it didn't happen, giving Team Tebow a chance for the victory, which they took advantage of. Oh well.
Saturday night, after the standard "Where should we eat?" discussion, we headed to another old standby, Northeast Grill, for another nice meal. Well, MOST of it was nice. Once again the kids were at their own table, and the adults were stationed kind of in the middle of the restaurant right next to a table of 6 which included a family with 2 kids and the grandparents. The grandfather was sitting right behind Debbie, with not a lot of room between them. That would have been fine, until one of their kids decided to give the grandfather a back massage. To do that the kid basically was on top of Debbie. After a minute or so, I politely (really, it was politely) tapped the kid and asked him if he could move over a little, which he did. That would have been the end of it, until the grandfather turned to me and said "He's just a kid, leave him alone." At that point all I said back was "I know he's a kid, all I asked him to do was move over so he wasn't on top of my wife." But the guy wouldn't drop it and kept making comments. He made such a big deal of it that he clearly embarrassed his grandson to the point that the kid started crying. Now the grandmother had to take the kid out of the restaurant to console him, and while doing so gave me such an evil eye that I had to respond by saying "C'mon!" Now the grandfather was back at me and I wasn't backing down, to the point that the GM of the place had to come and intervene. Eventually the grandfather turned around for good, we moved our table over a few feet and finished a nice dinner. All the while this was going on Matt was quiet while I was going at it with the grandfather. For anyone that knows me and my personality, and also knows Matt, you are probably saying to yourself "Say what?"
After dinner the kids wanted to go Go-Carting, but the place of choice (Jungle Jim's) was about 20 minutes away. We ended dinner around 9:30 and Matt tried to call the place to see if they were still open. We believed they closed at 10:00, but took a chance and headed there anyway. For all of you that have seen the movie "Vacation" you know what happened next. We got there and ran to the Go-Cart entrance, only to find the place closed down. After punching the elephant at the entrance (not really), we headed to the Boardwalk in Rehoboth for a few rides. Amanda and Brian rode a fast twirly car ride, Amanda rode a Frog Hop type ride, all of the kids rode the bumper cars, and Ethan, Ryan and Jack rode some totally nuts upside-down ride that freaked out Debbie who was saying all along "My baby is on that ride?!?!" After a few failed attempts to win basketballs (although Ethan did win a stuffed animal for Amanda and Amanda won a stuffed crayon on the game where everyone wins) we headed home. It was close to midnight when we got back, and the kids actually wanted to play the Name Game again. But we convinced them all to go to bed.
Today, Sunday, is a drive day. We will end up in Durham, NC, where we have an official scheduled tour of Duke on Monday morning. Since it's about 6.5 hours from Bethany Beach to Durham, we will likely stop in Virginia Beach for lunch. Time to pack up, so I'm going to pack this up as well. Back on the road we go.
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