Summer Vacation

We have taken a number of short trips and joined extended family for long weekend getaways over the last three years, but this past week was our first full week-long family vacation. We packed up the van and headed south to Myrtle Beach, SC. Our good friends, the Hortons, invited us to vacation with them at their family's condo on the beach and we gladly accepted. What's better than spending a week with friends and having a free place to stay?!

We got there Monday evening and the Hortons came the next night. It was an action packed week! Lily (3 1/2) and Josiah played hard and had so much fun together!

Silas (18 mo) had no problem keeping up with the "big kids" either! We spent most mornings on the beach followed by lunch and then some time in the pool. The kids wore themselves out and napped like champs from around 2-5 and then we went out in the evenings.

We took turns for date nights, and also spent some time all together walking around Broadway at the Beach and letting the kids ride some rides. With people setting off fireworks right outside our building every night, getting the kids in bed before 11 was going to be futile. So we just embraced it, enjoyed the nightly shows and let them stay up!

Suzanne and I had to live up to our reputations for bringing and cooking way too much food, so we all feasted on homemade bread, chicken salad, cheeseburgers, French toast casserole, baked oatmeal, fresh cinnamon rolls, pizza roll-ups, carnitas, greek salad, pistachio trifle and chocolate chip cookies! Yum!!!! It's back to working out and counting calories for me tomorrow though!!!

Trying Cotton Candy for the first time!

I can't believe we let him do this!  (Yes, that's Josiah 25 feet in the air!)

 

A few highlights:

• Josiah napping and sleeping all night in a big double bed for the first time.
• Josiah mastering swimming with just swim wings.
• Sitting on the balcony watching fireworks with my two favorite boys.
• Josiah fearlessly doing the bungee trampoline jump and riding a kiddie roller coaster with Suzanne.
• Shopping the outlets with Suzanne during naptimes.
• Waiting 2 hours to be served the pizza we ordered, only to get the wrong pizza!  
• When being told to go to time-out, Josiah angrily telling me "You need to listen to God...God told you not to say to say that!"  (And trying my hardest not to bust out laughing while I explained to him that actually, God told me very clearly that it's my job to discipline him because I'm his parent!)  
• Overall, we had 3 well-behaved kids, lots of fun, and great memories!