Ocean City and spell check

Wow, my spelling is atrocious. I had thought I was using spell check but apparently not. By the time you guys (kids) read this you won't have anything like spell check, because computers will be so far advanced you won't need it. We just got back from a yearly trip we make to Ocean City, Md and we had a great time. We were very out of schedule. You will hear about my schedule craziness later in life as a big joke. I have been going to Ocean City since I was born, every year for mostly two weeks until I got married. Then we started dividing up time to all that we have going on with life and we just don't; have two weeks to devote to something so expensive. It has changed so much over the years but I have such fond memories of growing up with that vacation. Nana would ask us to pack out miscellaneous bags with whatever we felt we couldn't live without at the beach for two weeks and my aunts and uncles wold be rambunctious and loud and we would try to get down the boardwalk as much as possible. We would go there for rides, Candy Kitchen, Dumser's ice cream, and SKEE BALL. Some places still have the old school metal flip scores for skee ball.

These days every time we go down we try to get a COUSINS NIGHT out and finally this year I bought a Fire Dept. shirt from Ocean City. They run 5,000 calls and I run 300. Big firehouse differences. They are almost 100% volunteer still after all those calls and that is very rare. I tell you this all the time, that volunteerism is an important part of making the world a better place, in fact it may save us all from total destruction some day, but that community as well as Trappe and Collegeville simply do not function without it. That is something for you to think about. So we went out and had a great time eating and talking and playing skee ball. Shannon and I always have Air Hockey games and most of the time she wins. She is good at that and Miss Pacman. It is her favorite game. Grandpa was writing in the journal as always and is keeping track of all that happens. I save all of his old letters and have them for you to read about his florida days. Every year he spends 3 months there when it gets cold here. Actually that journal I mentioned is the impetus for this Blog to you three. I can go back to any age and find out what I was doing at Ocean City any given year and it is a blast to read it. It is hard to write it sometimes when you are tired and living in the NOW moment when there is so much to do (I can see a huge pile of dishes in the sink right now) but if you don't work hard through those moments, then you cannot reap the benefits later of sitting back and having a great time reading about them. With me, memories fade fast (I think that I have something wrong with me) but a spark can ignite them fully. Kate can remember almost anything from age 4 and up at the drop of a hat. It is truly a gift. Kaylee, you and Corrine got matching rings to remember your trip by (mom and dad won them at skee ball at night) and she has a new loose tooth and so do you. You just lost your first one a couple of months ago. Aidan loved spending time with Megan and Ryan and Kevin and they enjoyed being bigger and caring for you guys too. Pat and Karey are stopping Alliant studios to venture into other better fitting jobs.

Nana and grandpa are trying to sell the 182 Anthony Place house in Wyckoff, NJ 07481 for a second time. The economy is doing very badly so they have to see if they can right now or if they have to wait, but Grandpa has wanted to move to the Jersey shore for a long time now. I realized something important that I may have known but not really focused my energy on. It's very odd to think I will not go back to Wyckoff once nana and grandpa leave. I have almost all of my memories there of St. Elizabeth's Catholic School and Ramapo High School, and I am sure I will take you there, but once they are gone it is no longer home. Home means so many things. It means 147 East Seventh Ave in Trappe, but it also means Wyckoff. I think home actually really means with your family. I remember getting lost on the beach once with my family friend Owen Sullivan and when asked where home was I would have to say wherever my parents were staying. I think home is wherever we are a family together at that time and I will just mourne the sentimental value of Wyckoff and 147 when we sell it and move into something bigger and newer for Mom.

I just used spell check..spell what?