Beach Bums

If Europe was go, go, go then the beach is sit and stay a while! Like every year, we leave early in the morning, around 3-4 AM so that the girls will get some good ZZZ's in the car before sunrise... while that was our "plan" that was not to be our reality. Never start a 4 AM drive by stopping for donuts first. We all met at the gas station and my dad was waiting with 2 dozen donuts. The girls ate and never slept again. Oh well. I think Sarah Grace may have slept an our and a half of the 7 hours and Charlotte maybe 45 minutes (and mommy 0). All that said, they were exceptionally good and other than planned stops for gas and a later breakfast we never had to make any pit stops. Thank you Lord for DVD players!

We got to the beach around noon and went to get groceries and then unpacked and got settled into our condo. Normally, we hit the beach ASAP but this year it was soooo BLAZIN' hot we changed our plans and I think , started a new tradition. We let the kids play in the condo and stretch their legs and then we went to an early (4:00) dinner, we were the youngest people there by 40 years, and then after dinner played on the beach and at the pool till dark.

It was a perfect night, not too hot, the tide was in and had made fun tide pools for the girls to play in. All 4 girls liked the water. It seems like in years past there's always one who's scared of it. It was so fun to see them all playing together. After a couple of hours on the beach the sun started to set and we headed to the pool. We hadn't been at the pool more than 30 minutes when my dad and Adam noticed something floating in the pool. Yes, we were those people, Charlotte pooped in the pool. She had a swim diaper on, but the more she jumped in the pool the more that got pushed out of the back of her bikini bottoms. So, we reported it and they closed the pool the entire next day. Dang it! But we were glad we reported it because it turns out she ended up having a virus that stayed with her the rest of the trip...

For the next 6 days it was the same routine... Wake up around 8-9:00 and eat breakfast, slather kids in sunscreen, hit the beach around 11 and stay all day with intermittent trips to the pool. The kids all liked playing in the sand more than the water. They dug, "baked", made castles, threw it on us and each other, and liked having us dig huge holes and fill them with water. It seemed like every time we turned around we were heading to the showers to rinse sand out of someones' eyes.

I think over all they liked the pool the most. They were all brave and wanted to jump and be thrown around in the pool. Typically it's beach for most of the day and the pool for and hour or so in the afternoon...this year that was reversed a couple of days. This was the first year SG was really swimming and you didn't feel as pressured to watch her every second. She loved her freedom and showing off to the little girls, and anyone else who'd watch.

The girls were also into beach critters. Luckily, no one was scared by crabs, sand fleas or fish. They spent a lot of their days with their nets catching poor little fish and sand fleas and tormenting them in their buckets...but it was good for hours of fun. They also liked to chase off any birds brave enough to come close to our gaggle of girls.

Evenings were the same but different every night. We have our regular rotation of seafood restaurants and ice cream shops that we cycle through each trip. And the girls did great, even with long waits and longer meals no one ever had a meltdown. MAJOR answered prayer! One night there was a guy singing on the docks after dinner and Krista and the kids danced for a while, another night we went to the boardwalk for ice cream, we went to the marina to see the boats, one night we came back after dinner and the older girls went crabbing. You'd think with Sarah Grace being more experienced (and never negatively) she'd enjoy it and not be scared of the crabs. But the last couple of years she's spent much of the time running in the opposite direction from the crabs. This year one did almost run over her foot and she about lost her mind. Don't let the pics fool you, she wasn't as brave as she looks.

Below:

Lorentzs, Lords, Lords, Selfs, Gadds, Beelers, Thomasons

There's quite a group of us down there together every year. It's always my immediate family and my dad's parents and then over the past 3-4 years my mom's side of the family has been there too. My cousin, Elizabeth and her family live near the beach and they come over and hang out during the day with us and all the kids play. It's so fun, there are 9 kids under 6 years old and we're quite the spectacle. The past couple of years we've taken a break from seafood one night to go to my cousin's house for pizza and let the kids play. By the middle of the week the girls are ready for something normal. We eat and they play in the yard and this year we did sparklers. 9 kids playing with fire all at once was probably not the smartest thing but there were only a couple of uh ohs...

Overall it was a great trip, great time with family, beautiful weather (except for one quick storm the last day) great food and a little relaxation.