A day at the beach

We've been really craving a vacation lately, but going on vacation right now is not in the schedule or the budget.  However, last weekend we decided to try to fulfill this desire with a mini one night vacation in our favorite shore town.

Becky reads on the beach.

The Jersey Shore Roller Girls were having a bout versus the Philadelphia Roller Girls.  You may remember our last (and only) encounter with roller derby, which we declared a good time worth repeating.

If we're being honest the roller derby itself was less entertaining than it's New York cousin, with fewer fans and too many bouts started with kneeling and hand holding (are we playing red rover??).  It was really interesting though to finally see the inside of the Asbury Park Conventional Hall, and they definitely get extra points for the opening and half-time band:

 I asked Becky what the connection was between bag pipers and roller derby.  She replied, "quirky."

Speaking of quirky, we had to stay in a new bed and breakfast because the one we traditionally stay in was not yet open for the season.  The new b&b featured a sort of African-ish theme and included this lovely piece of decor:

    

close up

 This creepy monkey lamp threatened to eat Becky in the middle of the night.  I valiantly offered to save her when she expressed concern at the beginning of the night, but sadly I slept through the actual attack.  You'll have to sit on the edge of your seats, wondering if she survived, until she graces this blog with a blog post.
Just kidding, here she is being attacked again the very next day:

On the way home from "our" part of the shore we stopped to tour the country's oldest lighthouse.

What's a good vacation without a little history lesson and climbing 10 stories worth of winding metal stairs?  We're so cultured.

Well, it cost a lot less than the week at an all-inclusive Aruban resort or the week of volunteering at the Sri Lankan elephant orphanage that we were dreaming about, so it will have to do for now.

Summer Kick-off 2011

We spent a very lovely three day weekend kicking off summer at our favorite B&B in our favorite Jersey shore town.  Several years ago we were approaching our first summer living in New Jersey and, being beach lovers, figured we should take a trip to the shore.  We found a campground to use as a home base, and spent a weekend exploring various towns described in our guidebook. 

We fell in love with one town in particular, called Ocean Grove.  It's chock full of gorgeous Victorian homes and cute little shops, has a non-commercial boardwalk all along the ocean, and the whole town smells like beach.  Ocean Grove quickly became our getaway place, and we go down for daytrips several times each summer.  We found an adorable B&B that serves delicious hot breakfast (the specialty is cream cheese stuffed French toast casserole!) and has off-season rates and a 3-for-2 deal in May.  Last year we weren't able to go due to the cost and time of wedding planning trips (though we did haul a friend there to take our fake e-pics there last April and spent a week there with my family in July), but this year we continued what has become an annual May tradition.

Last Friday we later calculated that we walked nearly eight miles, as we checked to make sure that all of our favorite places were still there.  The shore was abuzz with people getting ready for the summer.  Beach storage bins were freshly painted and lined up to be set out, lifeguard stands and playground equipment were piled and awaiting beach placement, and everyone seemed to be out and about getting their summer homes set up for the season.  I'm happy to report that no one pulled out the plug on the ocean in the last several months of our absence:

A wave surprises Becky.

Happy hour by the ocean!

The only disappointing change is that a bakery closed, but I do suppose time marches onwards.  Thankfully our favorite ice cream shop is still thriving.  Here's Becky with a peanut-butter-twirl filled waffle cone:

On Saturday we tried out a new activity: horse racing.  We had never been before, as I'm fairly certain that Midwesterners do not partake in this sport.  But we're almost always up for new wacky adventures in sporting so we decided to give it a shot.  I hope we weren't inadvertently supporting animal cruelty, although Wikipedia tells me that unfortunately we may have been.  I honestly had no idea that there would be so many people.  Apparently large groups of friends/families/co-workers/who knows who rent out whole areas of picnic tables and bring in picnics and barbecues and coolers of beer and settle in for the whole day.  We purchased a program to try to get our bearings, and ended up placing $14 worth of bets.  We won back $2.60. 

There was a bit of a marital snafu when Becky wanted to bet on a horse that would have won us a few dollars and I instead insisted on betting on a horse that won us nothing.  But overall, the horses were sleek and the hot dogs were familiar (at one funny point I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with not knowing what we were doing and I declared that we needed hot dogs because I had eaten a hot dog before).  Becky declared that her favorite moment was when, after we had been at the track for about an hour, we finally spotted a horse and I said a bit too loudly "look, there's a horse!" 

We also spent plenty of time relaxing in the B&B, including reading Harry Potter (yes, the treasured books fresh from the Harry Potter trunk!) on the porch:

Becky claims she's "having fun in my mind."

And plenty of time wandering on the beach, sticking our toes into the still frigid water:

Although we somewhat jokingly agreed to call this the start of summer, I am eagerly awaiting the warm summer weather and the warming of the ocean that will allow us to return to Ocean Grove to swim!!

Greece-ward ho!

In less political news, the honeymoon is inching towards being a reality rather than a dream! Both of us have successfully acquired our work's approval for summer vacation. And both of us have once again been laughed at by our offices for putting in the earliest vacation requests.

We've spent the last several weeks stalking every travel website we'd ever heard of in search of a combination of flights that didn't make our eyeballs pop out of our heads. We've pretty much been operating under the assumption that if we just searched hard enough (and crossed our fingers, and chanted, and threw in a rain dance for good measure), then cheaper flights would appear by magic. 

Shocking news: that hasn't happened so far.

Normally under these circumstances, I'd be inclined to wait a bit longer in the hopes of summer sales appearing. But unsurprisingly, we also did a whole bunch of research on that and read from many "experts" that summer sales aren't all that likely this year, between airline consolidation, rising oil prices, yada yada yada. And the flights currently available are at perfect times and are in/out of the most convenient airport to our home. So tonight we finally bit the bullet and bought our plane tickets! We are officially going to Greece and London!

New Year's, Badger Style

I managed to survive my first day back at work after 12 glorious days of vacation. My brain is still a bit fuzzy, but hopefully that won't prevent me from regaling you with tales of our adventures. We spent the first part of our vacation, including Christmas and the few days immediately following it, in Massachusetts with Carrie's family. I'll leave Carrie to tell you about those shenanigans.

After being thoroughly worn out by two toddlers, we flew to Wisconsin to spend a few days with my family. My parents picked us up at the airport and promptly whisked us off to Flat Top Grill, a Mongolian BBQ restaurant where you put your own stir fry ingredients in a bowl and they cook it for you. What distinguishes Flat Top from similar restaurants is, first and foremost, their roti bread; it's a delicious, flaky, buttery flatbread that I'm sure has an obscene number of calories but is totally made of WIN. Sadly, there are no pictures of said dinner on my camera because we ate too fast, but trust me, it was yummy.

My sister and her boyfriend drove up the next day, and we spent the evening playing multiple rounds of Cranium with them and my parents. Our time in Wisconsin was basically dominated by a. food and b. Cranium. Sadly, the Madison contingent dominated at Cranium, but we put up a good fight!

My other sister arrived home the following day, and we set out celebrating New Year's Even in style: with fun hats, more board games, too many snack foods (mostly puppy chow), and our beloved friend Asti.

We still didn't win at Cranium (or Pictionary, for that matter), but we dominated at Taboo! During downtime Carrie also created some lovely art for us to enjoy:

Old Man Cranium Clay

 

Carrie's depictions of me, Angie, Ian, and Jen

On New Year's Day we watched the Tournament of Roses Parade, then celebrated Christmas with my family. The rest of the family had celebrated earlier, but they decided to let us open our own presents. And Santa waited to fill all our stockings at once!

And of course, in a house full of Badgers, we watched the football team's valiant Rose Bowl efforts against TCU and their vastly inferior mascot. Sadly, Bucky was not victorious in the end, but it was not for lack of spirit at my house!

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I AM sitting on the floor cutting summer sausage in that picture. The smorgasbord needed to be spread, but there were still 3 minutes left on the clock and I was NOT about to miss it!

I hope that you and your family had a splendid time celebrating the holidays of your choice! Although I wish we'd had more time to spend with our families, I'm grateful that we were able to see everyone and celebrate with them for a few days.

Back to life, back to reality - 2011 style

Well blogging friends, welcome to 2011. Hopefully we've all safely arrived by now. I'd like to say this will be the year that we will buckle down and secure our blogging fame. But it probably won't be.

To my family, who are eagerly awaiting the Auntie Blogging, I do intend to get back to New England Christmas (complete with candle pin bowling!), but not tonight.

Becky and I rang in the New Year with red plastic champagne flutes, alcopops, and some intense competitive humming (Cranium) in the company of her lovely Wisconsin-based family. There was watching of the ball-drop (an hour delayed, naturally), toasting, kissing, eating, and all of the appropriate festivities. But then of course it was the weekend, and the rest of our vacation continued.

Now, the eve of January 2nd, feels like the real New Year's, in a much more mundane but realistic way. We've replaced champagne with diet pepsi (for me) and water (for her), extended family with our furry babies, and excessive quantities of holiday foods with our bare refrigerator. And tomorrow we will set our alarms for uncomfortably early hours and trudge our way back into the city that never sleeps, except of course when more than a foot of snow falls and then it hibernates for several days.

2010's contents felt pre-ordained (even if monumental) at the end of 2009. We got engaged in mid-November and knew that a good chunk of 2010 would focus on wedding festivities. We already had reservations for our major vacation of the year, and we knew that our other travel would be exclusively to the midwest for wedding planning and various other pre-ordained family functions. In most other ways we anticipated, it turned out correctly, that 2010 would be a year of stability for us. Perhaps in fact the most stability that we have had in any year since we met, and maybe the most stability that we will have for a few years to come too.

2011's contents are murkier. We've chatted about various goals, know we want to have a honeymoon, know we'd like to focus on being a bit healthier and on spending less time on the computer (but fear not, also blogging more! unfortunately for you, like most people, we have a history of failing at new year's resolutions), know we want to have a spring Ocean Grove weekend and a fall Vermont weekend, and know we'd like to someday find some more solid career direction. These and others are among the general partially formed plans we have all along declared for the post-wedding period. But, ready or not, 2011 is no longer some hypothetical distant post-wedding future.

I guess it's time to make it happen.

Welcome to 2011, welcome to Monday morning.

Our poor kitties get the brunt of holiday wrath

Hello from rainy Wisconsin!

Christmas vacation is flying by fast! Both Becky and I have been off work since last Wednesday, which has for the most part been filled with delicious food, tons of time with both of our families, and relaxation. For Becky, this is "holiday break," as her work closes for the time period, and for me it's vacation, as my work does not. Amazingly enough though, I might end up using only one vacation day for the whole thing, between holidays, bonus days in lieu of 2011 raises (bleh), comp time, and a fortuitously placed snow day. Although I'm sad to have missed the snow disaster of the decade in New York City (which is pretty pathetic from the perspective of our Midwestern roots), I'm also quite happy to have missed it.

The brunt of the impact of the snow on us was born by our poor kitties. As we nestled in to our plastic Amtrak waiting area seats at Penn Station, waiting for the train to take us away to holiday wonderment, Becky pulled the envelope with the keys for our cat sitter out of her purse. We frantically decided to mail the keys to the sitter, figuring at worst that the cats would be one day late on their food. The keys literally needed to travel one mile, starting from one of the most major post offices in the country. A snowstorm intervened. By Tuesday night she still had not received the keys. As Becky frantically googled for bus tickets home, my parents suggested FedEx. We made it to a FedEx shipping depot five minutes before they closed and paid too much money to overnight a second set of keys to the cat sitter. Guaranteed by 10:30am the next day. Right. But only on days that are at least 96 hours from the last snowflake falling from the sky. By Wednesday mid-afternoon there was still no sign of either set of keys. Thankfully both finally arrived that early evening and she was able to get in (as Becky and I were boarding a flight across the country). The cat sitter reported back that poor Piccadilly had a gift bag around her neck that she needed to cut off. Our poor kitties!! Hopefully their eventful vacation is over.

On Surrey Biking

You may have noticed our long absence from blogging. Or, more probably, you were on vacation with us and therefore did not. But for those of you not related to me, we're home from a lovely week at the Jersey Shore! Before you ask, no, we did not run into The Situation or any of the other show characters, nor did we participate in any of their antics. We were in God's Square Mile, people! Haha, okay, I crack myself and no one else up.

I intended to blog this while we were gone. I even told Becky I was going to do it. But I didn't, so here it is now. The story of the surrey bike.

Once upon a time we were planning a trip to the shore. We thought, what kind of wacky kid-friendly activities can we lure the family in with? Surrey bikes are pretty wacky. And they come with child seats - perfect! We originally thought for Jen and Sean and us and the babies. But then my parents wanted to try. So off we went!

Even looking at this picture now makes me giggle a little. Note the ominous black cloud in the background. We didn't note it. So, a few minutes after we're pedaling along, looking for someone to take our photo, that cloud starts to drip drip drip. Within minutes it is full-on pouring.

We rush back to the bike shop to protect our toddler cargo. We inquire about the rain policy. No refunds, rental rain or shine, says the employee. Great. Major biking fail. But wait! It's a slow day he says. Come back if it stops, you can finish your time. We run to the big building at the end of the pier to wait out the storm. I carry Matthew, and completely wipe out on the slippery floor. I make sure that he lands in my lap and hardly even notices we fell, and then look up to see at least a dozen people all staring concernedly at me and my tiny charge.

We hem and haw about what to do as the rain pounds down. We snack, toddlers grow impatient. And just as we're seriously considering giving up, the rain lets up, the boardwalk starts to dry, and the sun peeks through. Friendly bike employee graciously allows all eight of us to climb back on board the bike. And then the drips start. Rain is caught in the canopy. No biggie we think, we'll just push it up to dump it off. Cue rain water pouring down on Thomas, who starts screaming. Everyone off again, comfort baby, clear water collection, borrow towel to dry off bike. We're on again, pedaling furiously to the farthest end of the boardwalk we plan to go! Cue flat tire.

We walk the bike, complete with my mom perched at the steering wheel, back to the shop. We contemplate accepting defeat. But I don't want to accept biking fail! Still gracious bike employee granted us another extension and sent us off with a four seater.

By this point everything was hilarious. We took turns a bit and pedaled furiously around once again. The babies grinned, the adults sweated like mad, and bike fail was miraculously avoided. And you know what? Later in the week, most of us cited it as one of the best parts of the vacation. So there it is. Surrey bikes mean family bonding. I guess the Governor's Island Jews had it right.