When we are at the beach, Erik always digs a huge hole- I mean really HUGE, at least 6 feet wide and you can't even see the kids in the bottom of it (we have a really nice shovel). We then wait for the tide to come in and fill it up. The kids love jumping in and out (without or without water). We had plenty of these over vacation but the kids also enjoyed the low tide pools that Erik dug. In fact, most of the people on the beach enjoyed these. At one point I think we had 10 plus kids (not including our own) playing in the pools as they got bigger and bigger.
We typically arrive around 8:30 am stay through lunch and go home for baths and naps then return for the afternoon. My birthday was one of the last days we had there. We arrived early and after about an hour of listening to the kids complain (it was really hot and I think they were just tired of the beach) Erik said, "Do you want to take a bike ride to Ocean Grove?" This is how much my hubby loves to bless me! I love to ride my bike at the beach and I had been mentioning Ocean Grove to him. When I was growing up I spend many summer days there with my grandparents.
**Pause for commercial break by Jerusha.** Ocean Grove is a small town near Belmar. It is a very unique town, it is 1 square mile and all the land is owned by the church. If you buy a house there you only own the house and you have a 100 year lease on the property. The houses are mostly Victorian and very old. The is a building called the Great Auditorium, which was built in the 1800 and they have Christian meetings and concerts there as well as church services every Sunday. My favorite part of Ocean Grove is Tent City, these are basically shanties that have tents on the front of them, families have owned these for generations and live in them during the summer. I LOVE them, always have. As a child I remember being taken with the idea of them.
So we packed up all our stuff, headed home, asked my Mom to watch Cia and took Jotham and Karis to Ocean Grove on our bikes, walked around, had lunch, and just enjoyed some nice family time. My only major disappointment was that I forgot my camera! I was so bummed out I wasn't able to take pictures of the tent houses.
Later that night we had a family dinner with my parents, ate yummy strawberry shortcake and then Erik took me to my other favorite beach town, Lavalette, so we could walk on the boardwalk. My family also used to spend a good deal of time in Lavalette when I was growing up. I haven't been there in years and love it there as well. I'm not really into celebrating my birthday so taking these two trips to some of my favorite place was a real treat for me. Here is a picture of Erik at Lavalette.
On our way home we stopped at Sesame Place in PA. It is basically an amusement park designed for young kids. It has a huge water park element which Karis loved. There are characters from the show walking around and there is a parade in the evening. Jotham loved the characters. He went up to Bert and Ernie and had a whole conversation with them about granola bars (which he was eating at the time) and his new shoes. Cia hung out with my Mom (who is her best friend) and played in the various pools loving every minute.
This picture of Erik & Jotham watching the parade cracked me up, can you tell they are related:
I'm not sure what Cia was thinking about the parade but I think she liked it.
So that must have been my longest post EVER! Anyway, a few more photos to come in another post.
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