New Traditions

I almost hate to say it, because I know you will all be so sad, but today marks the end of my beach posts. 

Go ahead and take a moment to grab a tissue, take a deep breath, and pull yourself together.  I’ll wait.

[dramatic pause]

Are you ready?  Okay.

In my continuing series on “Comparing and Contrasting Cape May to the Outer Banks:  Dear God, When Will It End?”, I feel the need to acknowledge the close of certain OBX traditions and the start of new Cape May traditions.  For instance, we had to say goodbye to our yearly Water Balloon Fight, as the house in Cape May was a tad bit fahncier than our OBX house and I think we were all a little worried about behaving like fahncy people with manners, not wild and crazy common folk.

So while we bid a fond farewell to smashing Grandma in the head with a water bomb, we are hoping that as our years in Cape May begin and continue in future years, we will have some new traditions to anticipate.

The activity I think most of us adults enjoyed the most will probably be Mike and Nicole’s seafood dinner.  All of the families take turns cooking dinner for everyone, and this year Dave’s brother Mike and his girlfriend Nicole joined Mike’s friend Dan on his fishing boat and they actually caught us dinner!

Mike grilling shrimp that… um…actually came from Costco. 

But the crabs in that box came from the Atlantic that afternoon!

Dave’s sister is just kidding…she didn’t really eat the shell!  (I think.)

They also caught an abundance of striper and bluefish.  Oh dear, it was all so good. 

Our nephew Nick.

Another tradition we’d like to see continue was riding the Waverunners.  The (young and old) kids loved this so much. 

Unfortunately, you needed to be 16 to drive.  Next year, our nephew Tyler will turn 16 a few days before our beach trip!

We also headed to the Cape May Lighthouse at Cape May Point.  Dave and Jack climbed to the top, but Ben is a bit afraid of heights, and Maddie’s feet were tired and torn up from the pebbles on the ocean floor all week, so I stayed down at the bottom with them.

We also went to Sunset Beach to search for Cape May diamonds. This was a quiet, peaceful beach.  I’d love to head here every year.

Another beach tradition is to bring on the games.  Our favorites are Catchphrase, Apples to Apples, and this year we took along Hedbanz.  Teehee.  Grandma was Underwear!!

We always try to get a group picture for Grandma’s Christmas card.  (I also try, mostly without success, to get a Christmas card picture all week long…I’ll show you all of  those failures closer to Christmas.)

So, we have come to the end of my beach posts. If you have stuck with me this long, I have a bonus photo just for you to see.  Don’t tell anyone else, this one is just between you and me.

Yes!  That’s me on a boogie board!  About to hit two very frightened five year olds (I didn’t though, don’t worry). 

Then we all went home and reunited with Herbie and I did about 5,072 loads of laundry and mowed our jungle of a lawn and went school shopping and bought sneakers for everyone and a Phineas and Ferb lunch box among other things, and then we hosted 2 giant earth movers in our front yard for 5 days to fix the giant sinkhole that appeared there last spring and now we have 6 more days until school starts!  And I pretend to be sad about that around the kids, only you know that I am secretly jumping for joy inside myself because for the last week or so they have been arguing and bugging each other (and me) like crazy!

And thus ends my Fabulous Beach Series.  Thankyouverymuch.