Osborne's Inn

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We had the BEST time!  We don't want to leave.  Everything was just wonderful.  We can't thank you enough for your hospitality.  This was our first week at Osborne's and we plan to make a tradition of it.  Stay well and we will see you soon.

To follow up - we have been coming for five or six years now and cannont wait to arrive each year. We love to see your family grow over the years.  We wish you many more years of happiness in your little slice of heaven. 

Mike, Annie and Holly 

Through the years, what can I say!  Wonderful lifetime memories of a place most near and dear to my heart.

I sure do love the Osborne Inn.  The moment I stepped onto the porch I knew I was 'home'.  My dear long lost grade and high school friend embraced my arrival after fifty plus years since we knew one another.

October 7, 2013

This is truly a place that is a 'home away from home'.  This is my third annual visit and it just gets better each time.  'The hostest with the mostest' is Peggy Ann.   Frank is just as wonderful.  They are quite the team. We are glad to repeat our vist year after year.  You are so welcoming and gracious and I LOVE Apartment T.

Best Wishes to you both!

We found this place more than ten years ago, and have been coming back ever since.  Feels like staying with family!  Love it here and we'll keep coming back.  Thanks Peggy Ann and Frank.

Our family has looked forward to summertime in OC NJ for years and years so, we could think of no better place to celebrate our 35th and 40th birthdays than here at the Osborne! Our birthdays are in October so, we had the privilege of being the last couple here with Peg to close out the 2013 season. 

Peggy and Frank are always so wonderful and make staying here such a treat!  We can't wait to come again in 2014 and for many, many seasons to come! 

We had our best time ever in Ocean City this week with you and your family.  We have been coming down for several years.  We enjoyed the new balcony in the evening when the sunsets were at their best, but we enjoyed your big front porch with a book even more!!!  We love being able to just walk to everything and to go up to the boards anytime we chose.  

The little ones are all well behaved - Katie stole my heart.  I think the best part of staying with you, for us, was feeling like we are a part of the family.  We can't wait to come back next year!  Much love to you and your family!

427 Central Avenue - August, 2013 - My family and I love staying at Osborne's '427' because we have a lot of room.  We make memories and we are in the enter of the action.  We love walking to the bakery in town and playing at Gazebo Park.  We enjoy discovering all the parks around here.  We enjoyed having pizza on the beach for dinner and we had fun eating hoagies while watching the lifeguard races.  My sister Christie learned to surf.  We are grateful to be here.  Thank you!

Hugs and Kisses!

The Faust Girls, Kelley, Kerry, Christie, Anna Grace and Margaret Mary

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My family and I started coming to the Osborne's when I was only 4 years old.  From the moment that we walked into the door, we felt like we were immediately accepted into their family.  Every year there was some new memory made. I don't remember exactly which years they were all made, but here are just some of the things that stick out in the minds of my Mother, my Father and me.

1.  I remember helping Mrs. Osborne go through all of the pens that she had, to see which ones worked and which ones did not work.  I sat on the floor, in the living room, with a big piece of paper scribbling lines for, at least two hours.  At the end of my time, I was rewarded with some pretty awesome Black Pens! When you are young, it was like you won the lottery. 

2.   One year, many many years ago, we were putting our things away in the room, the first day that we got there.  My Dad finally finished putting his things away, sat down on the bed, and boom it broke. That's a long ago memory.  My parents didn't want to admit to it, so they sent me to ease the blow.  Mr and Mrs. Obsorne laughed and said 'things happen'.  Put that one into your Memory Bank.

3. Another summer we were there was the same summer that Amstel, the dog, made her first appearance.  I remember coming back from the beach one day and there was a dog sitting with Kevin! I was so excited  No dog was there when I left but when I came back, boom, there was Amstel Light! She was one a favorite of mine and a favorite of most of the guests who visited here.  Every morning I would see Mrs. Osborne walking Amstel and after her walk, I was able to play with her.  It was a great reason for me to awaken early in the morning.   

No matter the memories, we know we have gained a new family down  by the shore.  We are forever grateful for that! 

                      Colleen's Essay for entrance into Villanova University written 1990.

My room was a mess.  To appease my Mom, I started to clean through the rubble.  I did not want to hear her say for the seventy ninth time, 'Colleen, please straighten your room.'  Thus, I began my Saturday project.  I started under my bed.  Beneath an old Michael Jackson shirt, there was an album marked 'Ocean City.'  At that moment with term papers and tests being an integral part of my life, the seashore seemed a million miles away.  Anxiously, I opened to the first page which contained a picture of my family's summer home in Ocean City, New Jersey!

I turned the pages quickly, excited to captivate such pleasant memories.  I stopped, started, and smiled at one particular picture. It was one of my Dad, my older brother and myself, sunburned from a day of fishing.  There was a smile on my face from ear to ear.  This picture ws of my first deep sea fishing experience, when I won the pool for the largest fish on the party boat.

A glance at a few more photos and I actually began to laugh aloud.  There was a snapshot of me, as a ten year old, trying, and I stress trying, to hang a queen size sheet on the clothesline.  This must have been when I was a novice on chambermaiding skills.  Four of my summers revolved around folding laundry, cleaning rooms, and scrubbing floors at the Osborne's Inn for my mother, or should I say, my employer.  I knew I was destined for bigger and better things.  They came in the following pages of the album.  There was Colleen, the waitress on the boardwalk at age fifteen.  I grinned when I saw myself in the fancy red and white uniform of Jilly's Ice-Cream Parlor. I remember how ecstatic, yet nervous, it was the first time I wore my uniform.

The next page contains pictures of a room no one can forget - our 'bunk bedroom.'  This is my bedroom.  It is also my older brother's bedroom and my younger brother's bedroom.  It is also my older sister's bedroom and my younger sister's bedroom.  To create a scenario: there are two sets of bunk beds, one trundle bed, one single bed, along with five bureaus, one for each of the kids. To say that this room was cluttered, busy, chaotic, fun and exciting is an understatement.  So much has happened in here that it will forever be part of us.  We have spent hours in that room, sleeping, fighting, laughing and playing our favorite games, 'Who Would You Rather Marry' and 'Brady Bunch Trivia.'  Naturally, the room is almost never occupied by just the five of us.  There is always at least one friend over.  Whether we squeeze two to a bed or a few more bodies on the floor, we live by the cliche, 'The more the merrier.'  It is because we have adjusted to smaller living space in the summer that we are fortunate enough to have a shore home.  We may not retain our privacy, but the camaraderie and fun we have shared is unique, and one that many envy.

Memories are the fabric of life.  In a short time, I will be embarking upon my college career, a time to make more and different remembrances.

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Ocean City has been at the heart of my summer vacation memories for as long as I can remember.

After settling into our 'home for the week' my parents and grandparents set out on a ritual mission: to find beach hats for us kids.  An old family photo shows my sister Barb and me (ages 4 and 5) in front of the Flanders snack bar wearing straw hats tied under our chins, looking very much like junior tourists.

Summer always held a few special surprises when we got a little older.  My mom would serve a quick dinner, and then my dad would wink and say, 'Everyone in the car!' An hour and a half later, we arrived at the boardwalk for a night on the rides.  We browsed the shops, ate ice cream cones, and returned home late those nights exhausted but happy.

My teenage memories recall hearing Eric Clapton's 'I Shot the Sheriff' played over and over again on the old outside deck at Bob's Grill, staying up late to go to the midnight sales on Blue Law Sundays - where the linoleum floors always felt gritty regardless of how often we swept.

Owning my first car in college opened all kinds of possibilities for summer travel.  The boardwalk bath house accommodated frequent day trips, while a $12/night room meant I was set for many weekends of good times.  Although my friends and I sampled the night life in surrounding towns, Ocean City was always home base.

Ocean City continues to be my home away from home, a safe, comfortable, and familiar place to relax,  My family spends a week together each summer, and I try to make a couple of day trips and an occasional weekend on my own. Each trip imprints new memories - like the unexpected tones of the bagpipe player out on 3rd street jetty tonight!

The best thing about time spent in Ocean City is that I never have to be busy doing something, I can just BE.  Isn't it what a vacation is all about?