The BEACH!

Labor Day weekend was spent on the beach in Wildwood, NJ with my college roomie Katie, her wonderful husband Dave and their three children Keller (6) and twins Maya and Charlie (5). Ron was unable to come with us, unfortunately, due to his work schedule (but i think he quite enjoyed the quiet time at home - at least part of it). I brought my friend Natalie along, warning her what she was in-store for with 5 crazy kids running amok. She was game!

The weekend started out on an unfortunate and somewhat inconvenient note: our 12 yr old Ford Escort wagon died. Turns out there were two separate issues involved: a faulty airbag (which had been blinking for 5 days beforehand, and had a recall in 2003 that i inadvertantly ignored (!)) and an acceleration issue (step on the gas and go slower!). Made it to a Sunoco station and lucked out in having Dave pick us all up on his way - the timing in that respect was great. We were also lucky in that out of the 6+ hr drive, we cr@pped out only 20 min from the beach house.

So the next morning all of us minus Natalie and Thom (they wanted some alone time together - hehe) went to move the wagon only to discover intense smoking and a foul stench waft about in the front seat. Definitely not driveable. So we called a tow truck and moved her to a {Chevy?!!?] dealership to only sit thru the weekend because everything was closed! I stayed through Tuesday to get it moved once again to a Ford dealer, where it still sits as we type this.But enough of my car woes - onto the FUN! Once the car was planned to just sit somewhere, i was able to free my mind of that and focus on the intentions of the trip - FUN IN THE SUN! We went to the pool, went to the beach (twice) and went to the boardwalk, the nine of us. Sam had a great time, and I even lugged the Pack-n-Play to the beach thinking Thom was DEFINITELY going to zonk, which he never did. He had many visitors come see him in his 'beach-hut.' The kids all dug in the sand and made sand castle cities and Sam and I found lots of shells. A body surfer even brought to us a giant conch, with the little guy still inside. We tossed it back.


To Katie and Dave, thank you emmensely for your help, generosity, understanding, and opportunity to let my family spend some time with yours at the beach! To Natalie - you were my wingman and i love you for it. Always...