I was determined to look good in a bathing suit this year. The past two years I’ve bought very utilitarian bathing suits on sale at TJ Maxx which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel but they were decent enough to wear chasing Miss A down at the pool and not totally horrific. I can’t justify forking over nearly $80 for a bathing suit like I did back in my 20s when, ironically, I wore bikinis and was paying more for less material.

I’ve been taking my hip hop class for weeks, getting down on all fours doing an exercise my instructor calls “butts” (glorified donkey kicks), and making a complete fool out of myself so I decided I deserved to buy a new bathing suit just in time for spring break.

Ultimately I ended up buying this tankini top from Victoria’s Secret which I found from a seller on ebay who sells overstocks from Victoria’s Secret. (Bargain woot!) Don’t worry, I wore bottoms with it since I already had a solid black pair. Although my new tankini top definitely does the boobs good, mine look nothing like this after breastfeeding two babies:

There’s not an exercise out there that will restore the pristine 20-something nature of my boobs like this model’s.

I have to admit I bought a black skirted bathing suit bottom last year, but give me a break it’s the uber minimalist bathing suit skirt. It’s just enough to cover my upper thighs, barely, but then again it’s a slippery slope once you enter the kingdom of skirted bathing suits and the temptation to spiral downward into the mom jeans pool of swim wear.

I was very pleased with my tankini top, and dang if I can’t find ONE SINGLE DECENT PICTURE to share of me wearing it from vacation (cough) but I noticed on our trip that it has a tendency to ride up after several hours and in one picture when we were out boating I realized that my boobs are now so flimsy that if I’m not careful my halter top tankini will hoist my boobs all the way up to my neck.

I might not be taut, but I’m flexible!