Our Family Vacation--Days 1 and 2

On Monday May 30th (Memorial Day) our family set out on a long awaited family vacation.  We flew from Denver to Newport News, Virginia.  It was Finn's first time on a plane and he did really well.  He fell asleep on take-off and slept for the first hour and half of the flight.  The last two hours he was awake, and crawling all over me.  We played with some toys and some games and hoped the plane would fly faster!  :)

Reid and Kai were sitting one row ahead of us and on the other side.  I could hear Kai talking almost the entire time to the lady sitting next to him.  She was very gracious and good to Kai.  I think I heard her say she used to work at a preschool.  Poor thing probably didn't expect to be doing that again on a 3 and half hour flight!

We landed in Newport News, which is a smaller airport, and the kids ran around a bit while Reid collected luggage and our rental car.  Kai was very nervous about the idea of a rental car ahead of time, but once he saw our red Grand Caravan he got excited.  Now he says he wants a minivan at home, too.  One day, buddy, one day.

The kids in the mini-van.

The first thing we needed to do in Virginia was get ice cream.  The minute we stepped off of the plane it became apparent that we were from Colorado.  We left Denver in perfect weather--70s, sun shining, PERFECT.  On the jetway in Virginia you could feel the humidity, all of about 50% of it, and the 90 degree heat.  Uggghh!  Chick-Fil-A shakes here we come!

After our stop at Chick-Fil-A, we headed to our hotel on the beach in Virginia Beach.  I was happy with our choice.  This is the view from our hotel room.  You can see the beach is a bit "crowded" from Memorial Day traffic.  The rest of the week was a lot less "crowded".  It was a perfect time to go to an east coast beach as it was warm and summer had started, but the kids were all still in school back East.  So, the days were fairly free of traffic and in the evenings it would pick up a bit (after work and school traffic).  It really was a great beach week!

That night we looked around just a bit and got ourselves a small dinner at Subway.  We decided to do our best to keep the kids on Mountain Time and so every one settled into bed a bit before 10pm!  Amazing!

What was also amazing was that the first night the kids did great.  They slept quite well and woke up around 8:15 or 8:30am Tuesday morning.  They were well rested, so we got dressed and headed down to the complimentary breakfast in the hotel lobby.  After some yummy food we were ready to hit the beach.  This became our routine for the week--breakfast, nearly 2 hours at the beach, clean-up, lunch, naps, and then an afternoon activity.  It was nice.

Tuesday morning at the beach the kids were testing things out.  At first they weren't sure how they felt about ALL of that sand.  And they definitely weren't crazy about the waves and the ocean.  But we tried our best to show them everything you can do with sand and water.  And we collected a whole lot of seashells.

Kai's first order of business at the beach was a sand castle.
He had been looking forward to that for months!

Finn and Daddy checking out the water.

Parasailing.  I really was wanting to try that, but it really wasn't an option with the kids.

After our two hours at the beach, we cleaned up and then headed to lunch.  We decided to walk down "Beach Street USA" to Wendy's.  Along the way we passed a stand renting out bicycles and checked the prices.  It was reasonable, so we decided that would be our activity after Finn's nap.  So, after a good nap for Finn we headed out in the early evening (around 5pm) and rented a bicycle.  It was more like a rickshaw and good grief was it hard to peddle!  We rented it for an hour and returned it after 40 minutes.  Reid and I were sweating and panting and were done.  The kids enjoyed the ride though, and we did get to see the south end of the boardwalk and a fun playground that the kids got to enjoy for 15 minutes or so.

That night my older sister Wendy was in town to meet with her wedding planner and florist (her wedding was the real reason of our trip!) and so we met her for dinner.  We had a fun dinner at Olive Garden before taking Wendy back to her car and the kids back to the hotel for bed.  It was a super fun day and we were looking forward to 2 more days at the beach.  The one sad part of our trip came that night, and I'll post about that separately as it did not directly impact our vacation, but it did make me more aware and cautious.

Anyway, the first two days were great and we were loving the beach!