My Hometown

I can't believe our weeks vacation is almost over. We've had a fun week so far....catching up with family & friends...relaxing on the boat with Mom & Dad....playing with the dogs in the back yard and best of all...just not being at work! But in a few short days we'll be on the road back to FL.

I truly do miss NJ in the summer. The weather has been wonderful this week....just the way I remember my summers. And the lightning bugs...I miss lightning bugs! I saw one the other night and felt like a little kid again.

For as much as people gripe about NJ...I love this area. I grew up here and my parents still live in my childhood home. Wall Twp is a good sized town, nestled just West of the many tiny beach towns that line the Northern part of the NJ shore. It's truly a place you read about in storybooks.

I have always said that Wall is the type of town where people grow up and then come back to raise their kids here. Just as I have always told myself that if we did have children, I would do the same. (My parents current neighbors were the kids we grew up with....the son, who married his high school sweetheart, has now purchased his childhood home and raising his family in the same house he was.) I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's a quality of life that just doesn't exist in most places today (and certainly not in FL).

One of my girlfriends always said that listening to me talk about my childhood, you'd think I'd grown up in the 50's...but that's the way our neighborhood was! You knew your neighbors and had picnics and BBQ's together. Us kids ran around and played outside until it was dark (in the summer we'd stay out even later playing flashlight tag). Our backyard served as the hub of activity in the summer because of the pool and in the winter because my dad would pull us around the neighborhood on a sled attached to his dirtbike when it snowed. It was before the age of cell phones, pagers and GPS devices....and yet us kids were allowed have the run of the neighborhood and be out with our friends all day. Sometimes our parents wouldn't have a clue as to where we were until we got home for dinner and talked about it at the kitchen table (because our family always ate dinner together).

I'd like to think times haven't changed.....but I know they are different now. I wish that kids today were as carefree as we were then. I was very fortunate to grow up where I did...and to have that experience to carry with me always.