Warning: photo-heavy post ahead 😉
The first week of April is always eventful around here. Neil and I chose April 1st to get married sixteen years ago, because April was an uneventful month in our family – no other anniversaries or birthdays nearby to contend with. Well wouldn’t you know it, eight years later we went and had a baby three days after our anniversary. Oops. So now every year it is a bit of a juggling act to make sure that both occasions gets their fair share of fanfare.
Usually we have one weekend in which to observe both events so we just grab some Indian take-out for our anniversary, and spend the rest of the weekend in Kid Birthday Mode.
That’s usually fine with me. I love Indian food, and I look forward to my annual basket of naan. It’s enough.
This year though, we skipped the take-out and managed to sneak away for our anniversary weekend by ourselves. We had Friday night through Sunday morning at the beach, and still made it back in time to host birthday brownies with the grandparents on Sunday night.
We went to Ocean Grove, where you know we’ve been before, if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time. We’d never stayed overnight before, though, and we’d never gone without the boys. Both of those things make a big difference in what you can do and see. We walked all over the place: downtown Ocean Grove, the boardwalk, Asbury Park boardwalk and beach, Ocean Grove’s Tent City (which I’d really like to go back and see during the summer when it’s occupied)…
It was a lot of fun exploring on foot. And although I missed the boys and often wished they were with us, I have to admit it was nice to go for a long walk and not have anyone complaining that their little legs were tired!
No Indian food this anniversary, but we did have an interesting experience ordering from a Tex-Mex place that really just seemed like a Chinese restaurant with tortillas. Very odd. And not particularly good.
Weird multi-national cuisine aside, if we were in a position to rent a house for the summer, or a month during the summer, or a week during the summer, I could so see ourselves feeling relaxed and unhurried in this little piece of the shore, with its non-commercial boardwalk, cozy little downtown area, and interesting corners to explore.
I hope you don’t mind looking at photos like this, because you know there will be more Jersey Shore trips around here as the weather gets warmer…
looks like a great place to be. With kids or without! congrats for getting some time to yourself!
Thanks! I’m ready to go back 🙂
Happy Anniversary! What a lovely getaway…it makes me yearn for the smell of ocean air and sand between my toes so badly!
It was still a chilly enough time of year that I kept my shoes on during my brief time on the actual beach, and there wasn’t any ocean smell to speak of. Another few months, though, and it will be a totally different story… looking forward to it greatly!
It looks like you had great weather too! What a nice post – I love the photos!
The first day was cold and rainy, but the sun and sky were positively gorgeous the following day. It was perfect camera weather.
I’ve been to Ocean Grove one time, and I absolutely loved it. I’m glad you posted all the pictures! Reminds me that I want to go back.
It’s a great little town, isn’t it? So different than the other beach towns. Sometimes all of the flashy commercialism of the other boardwalks gets to be a little bit much, I think.