Carlos Zaragoza, 40
One of our favorite things is to play touch football on the beach. My son Robert plays football at James Caldwell High School. He’ll be a junior in the fall. He plays wide receiver, punt and kick returner, quarterback. Everything. He’s always in there. In fact, he complains about never getting taken out. So he plays us pretty hard at the beach, too.
The girls love to play. They’re on my team, and we play the boys. That helps even things out. My sister and wife and mother were sitting on little beach chairs watching us as the photographer was shooting, and they started laughing when the kids all jumped me.
We always do the same thing, make a day of going to the Shore. We try to leave by 7 am. The kids get so excited, they’re sometimes even up before me. My wife packs the lunches and the juice boxes for the kids. And the suntan lotion. Then we drive down to my mother’s house in Newark. Her name’s Betsy. My sister drives to my mother’s house too. Her name’s Cindy Rodriguez, and she works for the Newark Public Library. She comes from Parsippany with her daughter, and sometimes with another of the kids’ cousins. I make sure everything is packed and off we go.
We like to go to Sandy Hook because there’s no boardwalk there, so everyone enjoys the beach more. Once or twice we’ve gone down to Point Pleasant, but then the kids start saying they’re bored and want to go on the boardwalk, and my mother doesn’t want to walk there. At Sandy Hook we can just enjoy the sand and water. Also, it’s the closest Shore point to us. It only takes about an hour and a half. We usually get there around 8:30 or 9 am and stay until 3:30 or 4 pm. We also try to spend one long weekend down at Wildwood a year. I’ve got pictures of my kids going in the water when they were one or two.
It’s a great way to spend the day. Everyone entertains themselves. My mother will sit in a chair and read a magazine. CJ will stay in the water all day if you let him. When I say it’s time to start drying off, my daughter runs back in the water looking for the biggest wave to catch before we go.