Ocean City, NJ has been our family vacation destination for all our lives. In July, my family and I spent a week enjoying familiar places like Mack & Manco (best pizza ever), Khor's ice cream, Ove's seafood right on the boardwalk, and breakfasts at The Varsity (YUM!). Obviously we spent a lot of time on the beach as well, enjoying the sun, waves, building castles, walking the beach, collecting shells.
My missionary sister Karen and her husband Dave are also in the USA right now, on furlough from church planting in Cameroon. Their boys are AJ (15) and Zac (13). It isn’t often we have our furloughs overlap; one of us is usually overseas. So the time with family was especially sweet. The family photo below was taken at our Fish family reunion at the end of our vacation. Many of the Fish relatives (maybe 40 of us?) gathered at our cousin Nancy’s home in Mullica Hill, NJ. What a blessing to see all the cousins and various generations of family members.
Above: From left is my Mom (Sheila), my brother-in-law Dave, sister Abby, nephew AJ, sister Karen, brother Randy, nephew Zac and me.
Below are various photos from our time away. Most don’t really need captions. Most could have the caption of “Us having fun, creating memories, enjoying the limited time we get together once every few years”…
The Ferris Wheel is a tradition for us to ride… here are views below, inside and from in the air (so you can see how high we go!).
We also love to ride the carousel, ride bikes on the boards, ride those flying swings & the scrambler (I think this was my last time on it– ugh!), and stopping in favorite shops and other places. This year Abby, Zac and I added a morning of parasailing– how cool was that?!?!!!
Randy and Zac have August birthdays, so we celebrated early as a family, enjoying Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes.
For some reason we started a tradition of trying on funny hats while at the shore. Not sure why, but they sure do make for fun photos.
Above; Mummers! My Mom grew up in and near Philadelphia, where the Mummers bands are a lifestyle for many. I remember as a kid watching New Year's Day's parades (on TV- never yet live) where so many different Mummers groups would perform. At Ocean City, they invite Mummers from the Philly area to play on the boardwalk at night. My mom was so thrilled to see them and then one of the guys invited her to dance with them... I got great video of her joy as she danced around the boards with them.
Below: enjoying the beach in the early morning quiet.
