Vacation Story

We spent last week visiting Tim's parents in North Carolina on a much needed vacation. While I couldn't wait to get down there and see Tim's parents, the idea of spending somewhere between 7.5-9 hours in a car with two small children was enough to give me nightmares. I have to say that while there were a few moments when I'd have given anything to be there already (like 15 minutes into the trip when Collin asked "are we there yet" for the first time), for the most part the boys could not have been better behaved. They really surprised me. We had tons and tons of fun while we were there. We ate crabs, went to the beach, the pool and the Dixie Stampede, rode rides, and did just a little shopping. We packed a lot of fun into one short week. The boys really loved the beach. Nick preferred playing in the sand but Collin took to the ocean like a little fish. We couldn't keep him out. The water was beautiful, it was 80 degrees. The neatest part was that we saw tons of little fish swimming around our feet and I managed to catch two little hermit crabs to show the boys (we let them go after a little while of course). We even saw a mollusk, a blue crab and a jelly fish. I can't remember ever being at the beach and seeing so much marine life. Tim, Collin and I worked together to dig a hole that was deep enough to have water in the bottom which Collin thought was really neat. All the sudden he said "Watch out, here comes the Collinator!" and jumped in. We made lots of trips to the ocean to get buckets of water to make the water deeper. I'm proud to say that as much time as we spent in the sun, none of us got overly burned. I turned a little pink but my boys are just nice and tan. I can't imagine a munchkin with a sunburn, it would be miserable. We rode rides at Broadway at the Beach which Collin absolutely loved. He couldn't get enough of them. His favorites were the boats and the race cars that are like the whip from my childhood. They also had a really cool area where kid could play that Collin calls the "volcano water" because it shoots up out of the ground. Both of my boys ran around and got soaking wet in it. I was really proud of Nick because even though he was intimidated at first, he got over it and really enjoyed himself. He was the smallest one out there. Friday afternoon Tim's Aunt and Uncle joined us for dinner. It was really nice to see them again. Collin was anti-social but Nick was perfectly happy to be held and played with. We left early Saturday morning and I must say that as good as my little guys were on the way down, they were even better on the way back. Nick slept most of the trip and Collin was perfectly happy to chat with us and listen to his CD's. They had just a couple of moments. I think my favorite was Collin informing me that he had to go pee. At a McDonald's. And get a happy meal. Oh, they're still serving breakfast? I can wait. Manipulative little stinker isn't he. When we got home we went to Red Robin for dinner because who wants to cook after driving all day long. Here is a slide show of some of our photos from the week. Check out the boys playing in the water. Nick gets absolutely dumped on!