I need a holiday from my vacation!
So I have returned from our trip to New Jersey. All in all, it was a good trip. I liked spending the time with our family down there. It is always good to see them. And they were very gracious hosts who offered lots of hospitality and made it easy to relax.
We spent three days and three nights in Wildwood, NJ as the focus of our trip. Holy cow, were we busy. Every morning there was an activity followed by something in the afternoon. For instance, we spent one morning on the beach, portions of two afternoons in the swimming pool and then we spent hours and hours walking on the boardwalk. The kids got to go on a tremendous number of rides.
We spent several hours at a waterpark, where we buddied up in to teams. I paired up with Gabriel and we went on every ride except for one – The Cliff Diver. It’s a giant drop straight down and is terrifying even for those of us with a stout heart. I told Gabriel it was too big and lets focus on the other rides like Shotgun Falls which offered us quiet enough thrills. The other kids had a good time with their respective partners as well. Grace stayed in the kiddie area, but was ok with it. Chloe and Benjamin each had a good time going down all the slides they could.
The beach was ok. It was blisteringly hot out there, which was why we went in the morning. The kids and Liz spent some time digging in the sand and making sand castles. At different times during the morning they swam in the ocean with Rodney and Marianne. I did some swimming and kept an eye on the kids. I had brought a Sunshade that I set up and was grateful for the shade. It was the only thing that made the beach bearable for me. As you can see, I’m not a beach person but there are definitely things I like about it – but only if I can get away from it, you know? The sunshade lets me retreat when I need to. So, although others may tease me for it I will continue bringing my shade to the beach.
The boardwalk is filled with midway-type games of chance and skill. I always get a little worked up over the hammer/bell-thing. My brother-in-law is a mason and is pretty brawny. We also often go with a younger guy who used to be a soccer player and was in decent shape. For several years I couldn’t hit the bar hard enough to ring the bell at the top. So I was pleased this year when I rang it three times in a row. The kids also kept wanting to play the crane games, which are EVERYWHERE. I guess they’re big money makers so the arcades put them up all over the place. I rode the Great White, the Log Flume and a bunch of other smaller rides. Grace LOVED the log flume! It’s a big one too with a very steep drop. I’m proud of her. The other kids thought it was great too and were willing to go on it all night long – but they couldn’t go with out me and I didn’t feel like going again and again.
One evening we sat out on the sundeck at the hotel and sipped lovely libations while watching the people on the boardwalk. One nice thing about Wildwood is that mostly people don’t wear a lot of clothes.
So everyone had a good time there, but it was really exhausting. After three days of that we limped back to Marianne and Rodney’s house where we loafed for the last day. Well, the kids didn’t. They spent several more hours in the swimming pool! All the adults thought they were nuts, but were happy to have them occupied. Me and Roddo hung out and talked computers, games and beer. We played a couple of rounds of chess and generally took it easy.
At 3:30am the following day we left Millville, NJ. We made some pretty great time getting back to Massachusetts. Specifically I wanted to beat the traffic outside of NYC. Traffic can get pretty ugly there. At 6:00am when the sun was coming up we were just crossing the Tappan Zee bridge in Westchester County, NY. We stopped for breakfast just north of Waterbury, CT at about 7:30am. Gabriel felt pretty queasy for a while, which was unlike him but he got over it after a cinnamon bun. Oddly, Chloe didn’t throw up even once! The trip home was uneventful. We rolled in to the driveway around 10:20am and spent the rest of the day recuperating.
I played a mindless game on the computer for a while. I managed to tie a novice on MSN Chess – which was a gift to me because I had made some terrible and stupid moves because I was so tired from the long drive. We had some Indian food for dinner after the kids went to bed and called it a day.
I’m back at work today and it looks like they got along moderately well without me. Nothing collapsed but there were some things that didn’t go as smoothly as we would have liked – but at the end of the day things turned out just fine.
This weekend we have the company’s summer picnic which promises to be a good time. I finished repairing the VEX robot and Peterman is quite put out by it. He hates my robot. He’ll have to get over it – and I may have to enhance the ‘bot to more efficiently terrorize the dog. I finished the demonstration robot and now I need to figure out how I want to further enhance it.
Now that I am back in the swing of things I’ll fire up the blogging again and try to be more diligent about it.
Peace out.
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