Cape May, NJ — 5/23 through 5/26

We booked the site very late, but ended up with a really nice site at Holly Shores campground right off Route 9 near Cape May, NJ.  I left work early on Friday to be sure we had time to get everything hooked up.  By the time the kids got off of school on Friday, we were all ready to go.

Geddy’s car troubles were a concern so we gave him some dog calming tablets.  By the time we got down there and took him out of the car, we noticed NO DROOL!  So either the tablets worked or he has officially outgrown his car troubles.

We got setup pretty early on Friday evening, so we had a nice dinner, the dogs played in the park and we had a fire.  Holly Shores campground has a really cool dog park in the back of the campground.  The dogs were able to play while being off their leash — quite a treat for them (and us).

Saturday morning we went to the pool.  Even though it was quite cool out the kids didn’t seem to mind.  After having lunch at the camper, we decided to head down to Sunset Beach.  Sunset Beach is our favorite because they are pet friendly year round.  The dogs don’t like the water, but they enjoyed watching everything on the beach and playing in the sand.

Emily got a pony ride on Sunday as well… she was quite excited.

Sunday we decided to spend the afternoon at the beach again with the dogs.  We even saw another goldendoodle.  By the end of that trip to the beach, the dogs were “dog tired”.  Sunday night we hit the town — Washington Street Mall — for dinner and a little shopping.

It was a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend, great weather, great camping.  It was a no drool weekend for Geddy!  He seems to have grown out of his car issues.

This is a little late, but we tore-down after the winter at Otter Lake at the end of March.  The mud room was pretty easy to take down, I brought that back the week before bringing the camper back without any issues.  It’s still on the flatbed trailer over at Kathy’s parents just waiting to see if we will use it again.

We have been considering a seasonal site (mostly due to the high price of gas), but can’t seem to find anything that fits us and what we are looking for.  We’ll just make our trips this year and decide again next year what we want to do.  We only have one trip planned so far to Ocean City MD at the end of June.

After Matthew’s basketball on Saturday, I decided to take both Emily and Matthew to the camper for the weekend.  We needed a quick getaway but Kathy had a bunch of things going on at church.  We got up to the camper by 2:30 in the afternoon and I quickly discovered a problem.  Apparently, Kathy placed a 12 pack of soda in the cabinets without me knowing… it’s great that we have soda available; however, soda doesn’t do so well when it is frigid.  Two of the cans exploded in the cabinets when they froze and then they thawed out all over the camper cabinets and countertop.  It took me almost two hours to clean the mess up.

I then took the kids to the pool for about an hour (although Matt refused to swim for some reason).  Emily had a good time.  We then just relaxed and played some games until it was their bedtime.

Sunday morning the kids took advantage of the warmer than usual weather and went out and played on the rocks all morning.  I got play-by-play notification of everything they were doing because I gave Matt a walkie talkie… he really likes to talk :).

We are ready to go for next weekend — they are supposed to have some snow this week, so the kids should get a chance to sled a little.

December 22 and 23, 2007

We made a trip up to Otter Lake to complete the mud room and enjoy the snow a little.  Mark packed up the modular mud room that we created in Terri’s garage and he headed up to meet us on Saturday.  There was about 3 inches of ice on the ground that I needed to break up before we could get started (not too fun), but in no time we were on our way.  Matt took charge of getting all the ice off the picnic table — you have to commend his technique:

After clearing the ice, we got the floor down… 

By 3:30 we were done…

Not the prettiest thing in the world, but functional.  It should only take us about 2 or 3 hours to take it down at the end of the winter for storage until next year.

The kids and dogs enjoyed playing in the snow.  We had to head back early on Sunday due to the weather (lots of rain) and the fact that the pool was closed this weekend.

Just so you know, we aren’t the only ones with an ugly mud room, here are a few more from around the campground:

I took the kids up to the camper this weekend to give Kathy some room to put up the Christmas decorations.  We hit the pool on Saturday and just climbed around the rocks and the campground on Sunday morning before heading home.  Traffic was good so we got up there (and back) in just over 2 hours.

When we got home, we enjoyed all of the work Kathy put into getting the house decorated for the holidays!  She even had the tree up.