Mom-Mom invited us to spend a week with her at Uncle Tim’s house in Ventnor in June. Andrew had to work but the kids and I went down after they finished with school on June 25. The first day we got to hang out with Tim, Liz, Josie, Nate and Maeve! They had to leave on Sunday but Fran and Molly were there to spend the rest of the week with us.

On Saturday we went to the beach! It was a beautiful day. We left a bit early to get showered and head over to Ocean City for the rides!

It’s amazing how little has changed since we were kids. Most of the rides were the same, including this train monorail with creepy animatronic animal band.

And this raiders of the lost ark obstacle course.

The kids’ top pick was this bungee jumping thing, which was not around when we were little!

I also dragged everyone onto the ferris wheel with me!

Tim and Liz picked up some Mack and Manco’s (no wait — Manco and Manco? I can’t remember) to go and we took it back to the house and celebrated Molly’s birthday!

The next day we made some time for a round of stone school on the front steps and then headed back to the beach!

Since we were in Ventnor, after all, Sarah and Mom-Mom enjoyed a round of Monopoly! Apparently this was Mom-Mom’s favorite game when she was little, and Sarah has more patience than I did as a kid (I’m not sure we ever finished a game).

It was fun to spend so much time with Uncle Fran! We played many rounds of quoits, Sarah was getting the hang of it by the end. We also played some tennis and even snuck away one morning for some singles while the kids watched Iron Chef on Netflix.

We wanted to go out to dinner one night so we picked the Tennessee Ave Beer Hall in Atlantic City! It felt like a bit of an adventure to get there given how run down most of Atlantic City is, but the restaurant itself was wonderful — great beer, tasty lobster roll. They even had table shuffleboard and pinball inside.

After dinner we checked out the Atlantic City boardwalk! It was aimed at an older crowd than Ocean City, some of the rides were huge! So we got some deep fried oreos and played some carnival games and skeeball and then headed back to the house.

We had a wonderful time, it was a great start to the summer — thanks for having us, Mom!

Here are some pics from June! Blaine hosted his first (and thus far only) book club on June 18. The title they chose was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne so we went for an ocean theme complete with mini sub sandwiches, seaweed snacks, goldfish, swedish fish, and Andrew even sauteed some octopus, which the boys did not touch. The discussion was great! It broke down when they tried to pick a book for next time, which is why there has not been a second meeting.

We enjoyed the beach in June!

Sarah was invited to a lot of birthday parties at the end of the year. One of the parties was at a ropes course called Boundless Adventures, which sounded like fun so Blaine and I signed up to do the course while Sarah was at the party! It was our first time using a zip line.

Sarah also went to a party at Skyzone trampoline park, so Blaine and I tagged along again! It was the most empty I’ve ever seen it!

Then it was the end of school!