SISTERS' WEEK -- DAY 3 (TUESDAY)

Sorry I didn't get anything posted yesterday, but I was just TOO TIRED!  Here is where we were.

Ocean City, New Jersey.  Look how crowded the beach was.  I am used to being there either before Memorial Day or after Labor Day.  It is not crowded then.  We even saw people parasailing!

It was hot.  Very, very hot.  I was so glad a lot of the stores were air conditioned.  We kept going in places just to get cool.

I had slathered myself in sunscreen to avoid getting burned.  After the sun poisoning last year I was not taking another chance.  But I had forgotten a hat, so I went into a store and bought an OC hat to wear.  It was so much better with the sun not beating on my head.

My brother Henry met Elaine and I to spend the day with us.

We had lunch at Primavera's and then went to Jilly's Arcade and spent a long time playing pinball and skee ball.  The "Lord of the Rings" game in back of Henry and Elaine is the one they challenged each other on.  Elaine got around 27 million points (I think), but Henry got over 83 million points!  I never saw someone use one ball for 20 minutes before.  He is good!  Elaine is good on skee ball though.  Over 250 points.  I, on the other hand, stunk at everything.  I only got 70 points on skee ball and couldn't keep that ball rolling on the pinball for anything.  But I still had a lot of fun.  We were there for an hour and a half and between the three of us spent only $5.

We walked the boards, went into some stores, and got some Polish Water Ice.  It is completely different than Italian Water Ice.  So much better.  Yum, yum!  They both had root beer and I had mango.  The best water ice I have ever had.

My family is always teasing me about being the shortest one in the family.  So they were saying I needed a box to stand on to get in the same picture frame as Henry.  I said, "I'll just stand on a bench."  And I did.  We were laughing so hard.  What a great day we had.

At the end of the day Elaine said she had to go into the ocean at least once.  We didn't have beach tags, but it was 5:20 p.m. and the beach is free after 5:30 p.m. so we just walked on.  Who was going to stop us for 10 minutes.  I stayed with the packages and Elaine and Henry went down to the water.

Then they came back and I went down to the water.  Even though the day was hot, the water was still cool.  I got only my feet wet.  Elaine and Henry had the water over their knees.  I can't swim so I'm a chicken when it comes to going in the water.

When we got back onto the boardwalk we bought a Mack and Manco pizza to take home for dinner and headed out.  It was hard to see our day end.  We have not seen my brother since my wedding five years ago.  It was hard to say goodbye.  But it was 6:00 p.m. and it was an hour and a half drive for me.  We will have to get together more often than every five years.  We had a wonderful day.

SISTERS' WEEK -- DAY 2 (MONDAY)

 Today Elaine and I took a road trip to Lancaster County.  This is one of our favorite places.  It is so beautiful there.

Lots of farms.  Hard to believe it's so close to a large city such as Philadelphia.

We began by going to Kitchen Kettle Village, a group of shops in Intercourse, PA.  It is a huge tourist attraction and always crowded.  Today was no exception.  We had to squeeze through the stores.  At least the economy is good for them!  There is always some type of entertainment in the courtyard.  This time it was two men playing banjos.  They were doing old-time favorites.

There is a Christmas store there where we go every year and pick out one ornament for our Christmas tree.  It is a tradition with us now.

Elaine collects nutcrackers.  When I saw the window I knew she had to have her picture taken in front of it.

This is one of the beautiful houses in Bird-in-Hand that we passed.

There were lots of Amish out and about today.  However, as I said before in this blog, I respect them enough to not take their pictures.  I tried to take some of their buggies or horses, but things were moving so quickly all the pictures turned out blurry.

After we left Kitchen Kettle, we went to the Lenox outlet in Strasburg.  I got a couple of Christmas gifts there.  As we left the store it started raining, so we decided to just go eat.  We went down the road to Hershey Farm.  Because it was Elaine's birthday, her meal was free.  We had such a lovely waitress named Erin.  And the hostess Karen was great too.  At the end of the meal, Erin brought out a whoopie pie with a lit candle in it for Elaine.  Yesterday a cupcake, today a whoopie pie.  After we ate I ordered food to take home for Joe and we went through the stores.  Then we went back to get the food and left.  It had stopped raining by then so we decided to walk through the grounds a little bit.  The hibiscus were beautiful.

 

There was a part of the grounds that dipped really low.  It was surrounded by large stones.  We took our lives in our hands (ha, ha) and stood by the edge.

The landscaping is so beautiful.

See the geese by the lake?

There is a little bench by a waterfall where Elaine and I sit each year and have our pictures taken.  Here is this year's version.

Before we left we went to see the goats and chickens.

 

 

On the way home not only did we get lost (we missed our exit), but there was a horrible rain storm.  God (and my brother Larry's directions given to us at our frantic phone call) brought us home safely and Joe got his dinner.  ;)

SISTERS' WEEK -- DAY 1 (SUNDAY)

Every year my sister Elaine and I take the last week of July off from work and have a "Sisters' Week".  Her birthday is July 28th so that is why we chose this week.  We have been doing this for about 15 years.  It's a lot of fun to have a chunk of time for us to spend together.

Today Elaine came to Philly and we met our brother and sister-in-law and two of our friends for dinner.  We went to the Country Club Diner.  The meal was really good.

Joe

 Our friends Marion and Rich

My brother Larry and sister-in-law Kim

The birthday girl, Elaine

When dessert came out the waitress brought Elaine a cupcake with a lit candle in it and we all sang "Happy Birthday".  I think she was embarrassed, but she kept smiling through it all.

As we left the restaurant the sky was threatening.

We got in the car when the first drops fell.  As we drove out of the parking lot the deluge hit.  It was so heavy that I could see less than a foot in front of me.  We don't live very far from the diner so that was good, but the going was very slow.  Hopefully this will break our heat wave and give us some cooler weather.  We so need the rain too.

Tomorrow we're off to Lancaster County.