A Day at the Beach

We are quite spoiled and go to the beach all the time, but it's often just a quick (and somewhat tiring) break between other things. However, two weeks ago we managed to have an actual relaxing day at the beach. My uncle and cousins were staying at Sunset Beach, which is just a little over an hour from here, and we were able to spend a whole day with them relaxing and enjoying life.

We arrived around 10:30 that morning, and after my children roused the last two sleepy heads out of bed (nothing like waking to the gentle sounds of a herd of children running through the house screaming in excitement), we were on the beach by 11am. We played until around 1:00, and then we stumbled back into their beach house for a late lunch. We we hermits all afternoon, staying inside while the sun was its hottest. Both of my brothers and my sister-in-law arrived around 2:30 that afternoon, and their appearance just encouraged our air conditioner time. By 4pm, the kids were zombies from too many hours of video games, so we wandered back out to the water. We played for a couple more hours before eating a monster seafood feast. The only strange part of the day (aside from the fact that the fish for dinner was imported from Lake Erie!) was remembering that we actually had to return to real life the next day.

Charleston

We ran away from the kids. See Part 1 of our adventures here.

Hey Jewel, Leon, Mike, and Talia!

Yesterday we walked, and walked, and walked. We left our hotel around 10:45 in the morning, and we didn't get back until about 5:45 last night. In between, we saw lots of downtown Charleston. We stopped for food, too. We had lemonade at Chick-Fil-A, lunch at an Irish Pub, and we found a Godiva store that served swirl waffle cones dipped in chocolate. (The ice cream cones were bigger than your head!) Here are a few of the things we saw yesterday.

We walked by the campus of the College of Charleston. Their mascot is a cougar.

The city sits on a peninsula, like Wilmington does. The Cooper River runs alongside, and there is lots to see in the river. A famous battle in the Civil War took place at Ft. Sumter.

You can see a battleship.

We drove over an enormous bridge to get to downtown. (Jewel, you would've loved it!)

There are tons of big, old houses. They are really, really tall.

You can take carriage rides to see the houses.

You can see old battle stuff, too.

It was lots of fun, but even we wanted uppies after walking all day. We relaxed for awhile in our room, then we walked to dinner, which thankfully, wasn't too far away. We went to a local restaurant that had the best fried chicken EVER. Dad also got some collards, and I got okra and tomatoes. It was awesome.

Today we are off to Charlotte to see Liverpool. See you soon!

Love,

Mom

Myrtle Beach and Charleston

Jeff and I have escaped for a weekend away from the kids. We realized it was the first time we've traveled alone together for fun since our honeymoon!

Hi Guys!

I hope you are having a great time with Gran and Gene. We stopped for lunch today at a place called Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach. It's like Mayfaire where you walk around outside and go to stores and restaurants, but it has crazy stuff.

Like a castle.

And a candy store with the world's largest gummy bear. (It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is at least as big as your head!)

And a whole wall of candy.

There was even an upside down building!

 After lunch we drove to Charleston. It rained a lot while we drove, but it had rained even more in Charleston. Lots of the streets were flooded.

When we got to our hotel, we discovered that you could see a Burger King drive thru from the window of our room. Then we realized you could also see a McDonald's and a Wendy's from our room. (And, no, we haven't visited any of them yet.)

Purging

If you count my move home from school, I moved six times in my first three years after graduating from college. I have natural pack rat tendencies, and you would think I would've cleaned out as I moved, but nope! I just suckered various people into helping me schlep my boxes and boxes of crap around.

That sixth move landed Jeff and me in the house on Athens where we spent four and a half years.

(Okay, so I couldn't find a picture of the house. But look at the cute baby sitting by the daisies in front on the house! And for you folks with Athens knowledge, yes, that is a scenic shot of Huddle Tire in the background. We had a house with a view!)

While we were there with got Pru, we got married, we got Max, and, yes, Ree was born. When it finally came time to leave that house and move to North Carolina, I let go of all my previous hording tendencies. I PURGED. We still had a great deal of college-y furniture, and it was gone since it was cheaper to replace Wilmington than to move it. My boxes and boxes of books went until I was down to a single small bookshelf work of reading material. I cleaned out my clothes, some of which I had personally worn in the 80s. It was time to let them go. We had a yard sale. We made two massive trips to a dumpster. We donated and donated and donated. I put stuff on freecycle. I even took an entire carload of broken appliances to a charity that accepted them. (No, I have no idea how I ended up with an entire carload's worth of broken appliances. But, hey! I found a place that would take them! My inner hippie was so excited!) About the only things we moved were wedding presents, dog gear, and baby gear.

I vowed not to let that much clutter build up again.

And I mostly have. Since we've lived here, we've had a couple of yard sales, and the kids' clothes and toys are routinely given to friends and co-workers or sold at the local Mother of Twins Club sales. But apparently I have not been good at purging the non-kid oriented areas of the house. Last fall I made it a goal to get rid of the equivalent of two diaper boxes (Yes, I measure in diaper boxes. For all you sane people, think paper box.) of stuff each week. And I did from Halloween until almost Christmas. Sadly, though, it quickly occurred to me that my efforts weren't really showing. I did a final purge over Christmas break and got rid of about 6 brown paper bags of clothes, shoes, and purses from my closet, but I had a feeling there was still a lot to be done.

I didn't even think about cleaning out for months, but I randomly started purging again last week. I decided to just work 15 minutes a night on the days I go to work. The part of me that likes to tackle big things was very disappointed by this - progress is slow at 15 minutes a day. On the other hand, the part of me that really didn't feel like doing it by Wednesday and Thursday evenings was grateful that I only had to do it for 15 minutes (and I always ended up working longer than I had planned so I could finish what I started). I ended up liking it so much, I kept it up on Friday and Saturday too. So far I've cleaned out the drawers and cabinets in my bathroom, the top of my dresser, and the extra dresses from Ree's closet.

Some of the "treasures" I found include:

• Cards from Leon and Mike's 3rd birthday. I felt bad...until I found the cards from their 2nd birthday.
• Magazines from 2009. 
• Crest Whitening Strips that expired November 26, 2008. Given the expiration date, I am assuming I actually purchased them at Athens Walmart and have now dragged them to 3 different houses. 
• One bathroom cabinet contained: 1) an entire bag of trash, 2) a bag of Christmas lights, and 3) a bag of decorations for a Christmas wreath. I have no idea why any of this was living under my bathroom sink. (Or, to quote my wonderful and lovely husband, "How does this happen?????")

I suppose the best treasure I have found is space. At least a little of it. And I can find my makeup in the mornings in the bathroom. That is quite helpful. Now if only I can keep up the cleaning frenzy.

Does anyone else get crazy cleaning urges? Does anyone else even let their house get this out of control?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

We just got done with our week of vacation at home.

The vacation fantasy: It would be a wonderful, restful time where I would be able to enjoy both relaxing and getting caught up on things so that when I returned to work I would be rejuvenated and ready to take on the world. The house would be clean. I would somehow find a way to finally potty train Natalia. The children would finally relax with me home, and would start sleeping in and enjoying their summer vacation. And we would have wonderful memories of fun family adventures. And I would emerge from it all, a beautiful butterfly!

The vacation reality: Our vacation wasn't terrible, but it was, well, wonky. We never found a groove. The kids didn't sleep. At all. I tried scheduled, I tried unscheduled. It was all a disaster. The first day of vacation they got up at 6:15, the second day at 5:45, the third day at 5:15...I was seriously afraid that by the end of vacation they would be getting up for the day before Jeff and I even made it to bed at night. We made the mistake of letting each kid pick out a fun activity which sounds great, but with four kids that pretty much filled the week. And because we were so busy, when we were home the kids couldn't switch into independent play time. (Although frustrating, I can't get too mad at them for this. I'm pretty bad about this myself. When I've been super busy and things calm down I find myself wandering around confused rather than finally tackling the things that have been piling up or GASP! actually enjoying the down time.)

I won't say we will never take a week off to just stay put again, because it was nice in many ways. I found time to read a book and watch a few movies. I have no idea how I would've gotten ready for a vacation right now, and we do live in a great place to vacation. (On multiple trips to visit the grandparents I've talked to families at rest stops (when you have four young children, people often feel compelled to talk to you!) who are on their way back home to the Midwest after spending a week at the beach, and they looked at me like I had two heads when I told them we were heading away from the beach and to Ohio for vacation.) And I even managed to get a project done! Bunk beds are assembled. At least mostly. We are still lacking a ladder and rails for the top bunk. And the kids did have a good time. I'll just chalk it up to a lesson learned and next time plan better and with fewer activities (if that makes any sense).

As so often happens, the best moments of the week were the ones that were unplanned. The kids turned the girls' new bunk beds into their clubhouse and spent hours sitting on the bottom bunk playing. Natalia noted that it was "hurricane-ing" all day on Thursday, and in the evening, we let the kids play on the front porch in the storm. I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket, and I took the four kids on a solo trip to Olive Garden. They, amazingly, sat there for an hour and a half quietly playing and making polite conversation. (I think bodily fluids only came up once!)

Some other great moments of the week:

The Butterfly Whisperer at the Aquarium.

Ree saved up her money for a Play-Doh ice cream shop and spent the week making "treats" for her siblings. There was surprisingly little jealousy, although in the process Mike did talk us into finally giving him (and his siblings) a weekly allowance.

Sparklers before bedtime on the Fourth of July.

The hurricane dance.

Mom's Summer Vacation

My kids always ask me when my summer vacation will be. They figure if they get long stretches of time off in the summer, I should too. I love the way they think. I could definitely go for some time off when the weather gets warm. Maybe even enough time...to be bored? Okay, so that's just a dream in a house full of four kids and two dogs, but it is a nice dream to have.

I am happy to say that my summer vacation started at lunchtime yesterday, and for the first time since we've had kids, I am using my time off to stay home. I suppose this could be defined as a "staycation," but that term always makes me think of people who have compromised, people who would love to be in the mountains or at the lake or at the beach, but finances just won't let them. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone talk about their staycation with a true smile on their face. This was instead a very deliberate choice to just stay put.

As we zoomed through May and June and all of the activities surrounding the end of the school year, I realized all I wanted was a break, and we don't do a fraction of the things "normal" families seem to do. I suppose I am fairly isolated, typically just talking to co-workers and my best friends, but I ended up socializing with a much larger network of families as we attended this myriad of activities. I quickly came to realize that Ree was apparently one of very few children her age who didn't attend at least three activities per week. While that may work for others, I just can't do it. I'm not sure my children can either.

So this week, I hope, will be quite the opposite. We are planning on doing things and heading places, but we will be spending a lot of time at home too. Last night I got to make a big dinner, and one of my highlights of vacation already was heading out on the porch last night with all four kids to shuck corn before dinner. It is one of their favorite cooking activities, and one we hadn't made time for yet this year. I'm glad we got the chance.

So maybe I don't get weeks off like my kids, or months off like kids in traditional schools, but at least when my kids have asked lately when my summer vacation will be, I can tell them the exact dates.

Camp Jewel

We are finally done with school for the year. Hurray! For the most part, our whole family loves year round school, but it was time for a break.

Ree was so fried at the end of the year that when I asked her if she wanted to sign up for dance and art camp, she promptly said no. I asked on several occasions, and the reply was always the same. No thank you. She would prefer to spend the summer at home, reading books. She is so my kid. Love her!

Despite not wanting to go to camp, we are not without camp activities. Ree took it up herself to set up a day camp for her siblings. Several weeks ago she started planning her camp, careful to ensure the hours correlated with when she was free. I found this sign hanging in our main hallway.

It was no surprise that the kids spent that entire morning playing camp. What I hadn't expected was what happened the following Saturday. We'd had breakfast and cleaned up and I was attempting to workout in the living room with the usual chaos. Suddenly I heard an exasperated Ree yell something like, "Hey guys! It's after 9:00. Camp already started!" Amazingly, they all took off running. And stayed in her room. When I got done working out, I found the three stooges all busily doing activities while she supervised.

They were all pretty content to do what was instructed. For Jeff's sake, I hope she does keep to the posted hours, and camp kicks in full-time this Tuesday.