Our Family Vacation--Day 3 and 4

As I said in my last post, we worked ourselves into a nice routine at the beach.  Wednesday morning was no exception.  Here are our pictures from the beach that morning.

More sandcastles  :)

We taught Kai to write in the sand and he decided to write "I love Daddy"

Finn discovered the joy of chasing seagulls.  We followed them all over the beach.

At one point, he chased them right into the waves.  He was so intent on chasing the gulls that he didn't notice he was in the water and he got knocked off of his feet by a wave.  I caught him before he landed on his bum, but he did get wet.  He wasn't so happy about that.

Reid really enjoyed just being out in the water.  It would be shallow, get deep, and then get shallow again.  See where Reid is standing?  That's the second shallow area.

For lunch we decided to get ice cream at Dairy Queen which so conveniently was located on the beach.  After ice cream, I put Finn down for a nap and then spent some one-on-one time with Kai.  Reid stayed in the room with Finn to read and Kai and I went to research boat rides.  Kai had been watching the boats while we were at the beach and really wanted to ride one.  So, we went to search out the options.  After we settled on a possible boat ride we decided to take a walk.  We walked a few blocks down the street and stumbled upon this history trail.  It was definitely interesting and we enjoyed our time together.

I had heard of pretty much all of the "legends" except this one.  And it made me laugh!  So Virginia has a certified witch, huh??

Our activity that afternoon was to walk to the north end of the boardwalk.  We were staying on the 18th block and it turns out that the boardwalk runs from 1st Street to 40th Street, but for some reason going from 18th to 40th seemed a lot longer than it seemed to get to 1st Street.  The kids were a bit wound up and definitely ready to be done with our walk when we finished.  So, we decided to get in our van and drive a few miles to Taco Bell for dinner.  Finn had a great time dancing at Taco Bell.  He was seriously ready to go to bed at the end of another good day.

"The World's Largest Inflatable Water Slide"

The statue across from Neptune Park.

There were lots of these fun sculptures up and down the boardwalk.

Thursday morning was our last day on the beach and so it was hard to leave that morning.  We lingered as long as we could that morning.  We seriously had grown to enjoy our time in the sun and sand.  One of the things that I found interesting about the area was the large military presence.  Every day we were out at the beach we would see a large number of military aircraft flying overhead.  It kind of reminded me of Colorado, except this time the reality was that these planes were probably headed to war.  Such an interesting contrast to the people playing happily on the beach below.



Kai wanted to bury someone in the sand.  I told him absolutely not.  Good thing Reid is a more fun parent than I am!  Here's the process they went through to bury Reid in the sand.

Finn and a large pile of sand

Finn was being a good helper

Testing out the hole

Buried!

Kai made his daddy a pillow for his head.

Playing and stepping on buried Daddy.

After Reid got out he left what looked like a slide to Finn.  So, of course he slid in the dirt.

An attempt to capture a plane headed east.  It was hard to see if I actually had it in the shot because the sun was so bright.

One last time out in the water.  This is one of the boats that Kai had been seeing over the last 3 days.

One last look at the beach

At lunch time my parents and brother arrived in town and so Reid and Kai went with them to lunch while I stayed with a napping Finn.  After the nap we all headed to the Virginia Aquarium where we took a creek tour--or a boat ride for Kai.  It was about a half an hour trip that just went up and down a inlet.  There really wasn't much exciting about the trip, but Kai got to ride on a boat and he loved it.  Finn actually held court on the boat.  He kept turning a chair over and then setting it back up so that he could turn it over again.  I tried to stop him at one point and he threw such a fit that everyone on the boat told me to just let him do it.  Sigh.....he won that battle.

On the boat

So excited!  He made good friends with the boat's captain and even got to blow his wooden choo-choo whistle.

The scenery on the boat ride

Checking out the scenery from the chair that he kept turning over

We ended our time in Virginia Beach by heading to Golden Corral for dinner with my family.  We had a good time and the boys were tired.  They had been waking up earlier and earlier as the days went on and were getting a lot closer to switching to Eastern Time despite our desperate attempts.  And so for that reason the boys were getting more and more tired, which resulted in Finn getting more and more clingy.  Since I was the primary photographer it became a lot harder to take pictures with Finn constantly clinging to me, and so the pictures from this point on are a lot more scarce.  Drat!

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!

Great Strides Updated

I just wanted to let everyone know that I added pictures from our Great Strides walk.  So, go ahead and check them out.

Also a blog about our beach vacation is coming.  I promise!

What Having Kids is Like

A friend from college posted this on her blog and I thought I'd share.  This article totally hits the nail on the head. For all of you that I still owe emails or a phone call, I love you, I really do.  Sometimes a mom just needs 10 minutes to herself!

TELL ME ABOUT IT ®

By Carolyn Hax
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Carolyn:

Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy, no time for self, no time for me, etc. Me (no kids): Wow. Sorry. What'd you do today? Her: Park, play group .. .

 Okay. I've done Internet searches, I've talked to parents. I don't get it. What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners . . . I do all those things, too, and I don't do them EVERY DAY. I guess what I'm asking is: What is a typical day and why don't moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events) and I manage to get it all done. I'm feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy -- not a bad thing at all -- but if so, why won't my friend tell me the truth? Is this a peeing contest ("My life is so much harder than yours")? What's the deal? I've got friends with and without kids and all us child-free folks get the same story and have the same questions.

Tacoma, Wash.

Relax and enjoy. You're funny.

Or you're lying about having friends with kids.

Or you're taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven't personally been in the same room with them.

Internet searches?

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that the only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you, is disingenuous indeed.

So, since it's validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. In list form. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.

It's needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.

It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.

It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense.

It's doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything -- language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.

It's also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn't judge you, complain about you to mutual friends, or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand or keep your snit to yourself.

A trip to the Zoo

One of the things that we decided to do this year was to get a family membership to our local zoo.  We bought our membership last month when they were offering discounts and decided to make quick use of it.  We left our house early on Friday morning (the 27th of May) and got to the Zoo right after it opened.  It turned out to be an absolutely perfect morning for the zoo!  The weather was just a bit breezy, so we opted to wear our jackets.  And we had gotten there early enough that there really wasn't a crowd yet, and the animals were awake.  We had a really good time and I was surprised that it didn't wear me out like I thought it would.  I'll definitely be looking for another cool-ish day to take the kids back.  Kai loves the giraffes and so we also bought a giraffe frequent feeding card.  I was surprised that he really did want to feed them this time and he almost did it without dropping the food!  We did end up stopping for a picnic lunch right before hitting our last building (the monkey house) and Kai was so nice to share his sandwich with a chipmunk!  We had such a great morning that both kids even took a nap on the way home.  Yay!

Feeding the giraffe his lettuce.

I could not figure out why the giraffes kept licking the observation deck.

The giraffes are right there!  Finn is SO scared of animals he just cried and screamed the whole time.

Playing at the children's play area.

Finn was looking for Kai!  So cute!

I don't know why he is looking so concerned here.

Kai with the moose.

Hopefully soon Finn will be big enough to know to stand still for these kind of pictures.

This peacock was hanging out right next to a group of female peacocks.

While at the bird exhibit Finn ended up getting soaking wet in this pond.  I'm fairly sure one of us got pooped on, too!

Kai learned how to pet a baby wallaby.

Kai wanted a picture here.  Isn't he so handsome?!

Finn was sizing up the monkeys.

Did I mention Finn doesn't like animals?!  He wanted nothing to do with sitting down next to the glass that was next to the gorilla.

Once he calmed down he realized it was pretty neat to be just a foot away from a gorilla.