Susie Cupcakes

As expected, the weekend in Wilmington was filled with sun, sand, surf, miniatures, and Northern aggression.

Jenna was understandably dismayed to deplane and walk into 90 degrees at 85% humidity. I tried to pretend that she would get used to it, and claimed it is actually very very pleasant, but she was not having it.

But after a fun morning of running errands (mailing letters, buying cat food) we had a nice lunch with Angela and then took off for the beach. Jenna took her first of 94 siestas in the car on the way down. Siestas are the besta!

We didn't actually make it to the beach until the next morning, when Mr. Cupcakes met us at the hotel and we drove to Wrightsville Beach. I became just a teeny smidge concerned about not being able to find parking anywhere at all near the water, and it began to seem that we might as well just try to sneak into the Hilton pool, when a parking spot emerged. Now, I must admit the following picture is what the beach looked like the next morning at 8am, but I feel it represents the best of what North Carolina has to offer. Beach-wise, I mean.

Loves it! So beautiful.

My cool friends liked it too.

Lots of time was spent on the boogie boards, swimming around in the waves, reading on the beach. The only bad part was my unfortunate spotting of a fishing vessel named Wet Pleasure. Ewwwww.

Then, it was time for MINIATURES!

Perhaps I should explain that Minneapolis used to boast a store called "Ahhh . . . MINIATURES!" It was really called that, with the elipses and exclamation mark and everything. And if that weren't hilarious enough, the store used to run ads in the weekly alternative paper, and one year during Christmas they ran one with a miniature Santa spanking a miniature woman with the caption "Who's your Santa?" So crazy and gross. And perfect. So when we heard that the Cape Fear Museum was featuring a special exhibit on miniatures, we knew Wilmington was the perfect vacation destination.


Living small, y'all!

The exhibit itself was fine, but lacking in the oodles and oodles of dollhouse furniture we had expected. I might add here that we never actually went to Ahhh . . . MINIATURES! so maybe we had unrealistic expectations of what comprises the term MINIATURES.

The museum did feature some other exhibits and, um, things.

I'm just going to move on.

I'm not totally sure what's happening in this picture, except that I was feeding a pretend Venus Flytrap some beanbags, and it was FUN!


While in the museum we also saw the worlds longest narrated diarama re-enactment of the Battle of Fort Fisher. It had flashing lights and cotton poofs to represent gun smoke and lots of dead little plastic figurines. It would be a pretty awesome thing to have, like, in your living room. Guests would come over and you'd be all, "How about a twenty minute diarama re-enactment of the Battle of Fort Fisher?" And they would silently curse the moment they accepted your invitation. But still, so cool!

But watching it, that's when Jenna started to get nervous about being a Yankee south of the Mason-Dixon, and thought that maybe we would sic a blockade runner on her. So she packed up and headed back for Minneapolis, where the weather is humane and the tea's always unsweet.

Come again, Jenna Wenna!