Memorial Day

Monday was a much needed family day for our little family. Even though we spent all weekend together it seemed to be one of those weekends where kids refused to listen, and they were at each other's throats constantly.  Ron and I were at our witt's end by Sunday night. 

Monday we hit the gym early, came home for lunch and Ron informed me because of the holiday he wanted to stay home to be with us. JACKPOT!!! Normally he still goes into work. 

It was a dreamy day. We went shopping for groceries and hit a few Memorial Day Sales so I could start stock piling clothes for the upcoming school year.

After shopping we went home and played outside. We got a fire going, and made tinfoil dinners for dinner. After dinner we roasted various types of smores (which were so yummy), and afterwards we lit off a few flowers (a type of firework), played with sparklers, and threw pop it's.  

It was exactly what our little family needed. Each kid went inside that night sticky, stinky, tired and full of smiles. It made my mama heart full, and so so happy.

Day 5

Day 5 of our vacation I felt started out as kinda of a bust, but Ron disagrees. We went to the beach this morning and didn't see any animals which was a bummer, but it happens. 

After the beach we decided to use our final free tickets to a place called wonder works. It is the coolest building I have ever seen!

It's kind of a science based kids museum. It was cool and they had some really neat stuff, but it was EXTREMELY loud and not very small kid friendly. There were a few things we liked like the bubble area and the giant piano you played with you feet, the dancing screen and that was about it.  I told Ron I just think we might be spoiled living next to the world's largest children's museum.  We wouldn't have really minded it at all, but when we stopped for lunch they told us we had to leave because we brought outside food inside. I was not happy and about freaked out at them, but decided it would probably be better to be an example to my children. So we took our lunches and just left for the day. 

The bubble lab

Lying in a bed of nails!

We spent the rest of the day walking around and exploring the shops.

We did have a special surprise for dinner planned for the kids, and pulled out day out of complete failure.

We took the kids to Pirate's voyage. It's basically dinner and a show. The show was incredible! It had live sea lions, Pirates sword fighting, acrobatics, mermaids, canons and the works. The food was great, and they fed us so much!!  Hayden couldn't get enough of it and kept asking about Davy Jones and mermaids all during the show. It was so fun to see the excitement in his eyes.  Grace loved it, but at one point hit her max exhaustion point and just wanted to sleep. She never has been one to handle lack of sleep well (I wonder were she gets it from?)

It did end up being a pretty fun day all in all.

Myrtle beach day 4

Wednesday was another outside day, but we had nothing planned. We just wanted to soak up the sun, sand, and water at the beach. 

It's been so great because the beach and the ocean is literally the backyard of the resort we are staying at. We can see it from our front porch and our back porch. It has been making the stay pretty dreamy.

We got to the beach early and walked along hoping to spot some wild life in the ocean again. We got lucky AGAIN! We saw a dolphin swimming and splashing around just off shore! It was so neat!

That little splash is in the distance is the dolphin.

The rest of the day we splashed in the water, Played football, walked the beach and built sand castles. It was a fun and dreamy day.

Rosie loved the sea gulls and would just them as fast as her little legs would let her. 

I wanted to make mention that we completely tuckered them out. All three kids had a nap today which is something that hasn't happened since Rosie was a newborn.

Our awesome sand castle with an alligator guard.

Day 2

Monday was kind of cloudy outside and supposed to rain so we took the kids and those hard earned tickets to the ripley's aquarium. Remember the 3 hour sales pitch? Well this is one of the sets of tickets we got. It saved us quite of bit of money so I guess it was worth it in the end.

We saw piranhas.

We held horse shoe crabs (grace wouldn't do it, and I had to bribe Hayden with a dollar to get him too). We also pet sharks!

We pet and touched jelly fish!

We went in the water tunnel and saw so many things. Our favorites were the sharks (pictured above Ron and rose), the saw fish and the sea turtles.

After the aquarium we went straight back to the resort got our swimming gear on and went on a sea shell hunt. It was lots of fun, and we found some great shells!

Day 3

Tuesday was such a beautiful day. We had planned a beach/outside day and it did not disappoint! We started the morning out by going down and walking the beach. We wanted to enjoy while no one was there, and boy did we. 

While down walking we saw Pelicans scooping up fish for their breakfast, we saw a pod of dolphins swimming around and a shark eating his breakfast too!  It was soooo cool!

After our little walk on the beach we went inside and got ready for the day. We decided it would be fun to get out and take the kids miniature golfing. This was the best most decorated and elaborate course I've been on.

After golf we ran home grabbed some lunch, and then headed straight over to the marina. Ron and I had organized a little sailing adventure for the kids. It was dolphin watching but we didn't see many Dolphins.  I guess it was to early in the season? That was a little disappointing, but the kids love being out on the water and being like real pirates.

While there the crew caught a few little critters we got to look at and even hold! We saw a crab, shrimp, some different types of fish and a squid. 

I held the fish and the squid. Apparently I held the squid wrong and it bit me. It wasn't too painful, but enough to catch my attention and draw blood. Then after he bit me he sprayed ink all over my hand. It was a "fun" experience and definitely one I'll remember.

 So far this trip has been so much fun! We don't want it to end!

Myrtle Beach day 1

Spring Break!!! One of our most prized breaks of the year. It's finally warm enough to go and do something fun with our kids AND Ron has an entire week off. So usually this means we go off some place to play. This year we were blessed enough to be given one of Ron's parents time shares for 9 days! So Ron and I decided it would be fun to go and explore Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We split the drive into 2 days because 12.5 hours was just much for our littles (mostly Rosie). We arrived here Saturday night and it has been nonstop playing since we got here!

We hit the road Friday night around 5 pm and drove we hit the border of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Saturday we drove through the great smokey mountains which were absolutely beautiful! This picture doesn't even come close to doing it justice. It's just the only one that didn't have a glare

From the window.

Stops at restaurants with play places are a must when you have been driving in a car for a day and a half.

We finally made it Saturday night around 8 pm! The kids were absolutely thrilled to be there! Our first stop was straight to the beach. And it didn't disappoint.

Day 1

We didn't get to see the views when we rolled into to town the night before  so waking up to this outside our room was nothing short of amazing.

Our first official day of vacation was spent getting groceries and going to this terrible 3 hour long sales pitch for time shares (we won't go into that), but basically we will just say we did it cause Ron and I are cheap and wanted free tickets to a few of the attractions in town. After the horrible meeting we headed straight to the beach and stayed there till our bodies couldn't take the cold and lack of sunshine anymore.

Rosie is ready to go to her first ocean experience!

Grace enjoyed digging in the sand most of the time while Hayden and I enjoyed skipping and jumping the waves in the ocean. The water was FREEZING.

We ended up finding this really cool sea shell that we ended up taking back to our condo only to find it was still alive and escaped it's bucket home in the night while we were sleeping! Eek!

Rose and Hayden perfectly describe how we felt by the end of the tires. We all zonked out that night from the day's adventures.