Beach Bums

The kids are finishing up their second week of fall break. As luck would have it (or as the calendar worked out) I was able to take off all of last week to spend with everyone. As much as I wanted to spend time with my family, I think I wanted even more to catch up. I was so tired of feeling overwhelmed. So my plans for the week were to hang out with the kids and Jeff, to play outside every day, to spend two days away on a mini-vacay, to do lots of shopping and cooking and eat wonderful meals and fully stock the freezer with premade meals, to really clean the house, and to spend two half days working so I wouldn't feel like I was drowning when I went back to work. And I have to admit, I honestly believed that could all happen. (I have a long history of seriously overestimating the amount of things I can cram into a small window of time. But in my defense, I am really good at cramming lots of things into small windows of time.)

It wasn't long, though, before I realized my plans were doomed. It wasn't going to happen. And on a certain level I was pretty frustrated and upset. I couldn't figure out how I could possibly survive the rest of the fall without cramming all of that into a week. But I didn't want to stop playing outside with my kids. Or taking naps. (Yes. Naps. Glorious naps!) Or cooking normal amounts of food.

And it turns out as much as I thought I needed to do stuff, what I really needed was to rest. This week I've been a whole new person because I did spend time playing with the kids and reading books and watching movies. And it turns out it's great that I didn't stock the freezer because it's looking a bit iffy on whether we'll keep power all weekend. And we got to go to Wrightsville Beach twice, and spend a day in Myrtle Beach, and another day in Sunset Beach. Not only were the beach days nice (how many people get four beach days at three different beaches on a staycation?), but who knows when we'll be able to go back to the beaches because a significant amount of beach erosion is predicted this weekend. As for getting the house clean, it looks like I will have all day Saturday indoors to get it done, so that will take care of itself as well. So the lesson learned is...procrastination pays! Or something like that.

But on to the pictures.

We had gorgeous weather for Wrightsville Beach, part 1.

Then it was on to Myrtle Beach, where we spent most of our time exploring the boardwalk.

 

We actually went to Myrtle Beach because oldest girl child wanted to ride the Skywheel, and it turned out to be closed. Doh.

Since John Candy wasn't around to break us into Wally World the Skywheel, we settled on spending an afternoon in an arcade. We all went crazy with the quarters and had a ton of fun. And brought home a ton of stuffed animals.

We did actually spend a little time at the beach at Myrtle Beach.

And then it was on to Sunset Beach. The kids didn't even want to go to the beach - we had to drag them out to the sand. But then they remembered the awesome part about Sunset Beach is we can go out past the breakers and go swimming, and then, of course, they wouldn't come in from the water. But the real highlight of Sunset Beach, as always, was playing the Game of Life.

Our week ended with a second trip to Wrightsville Beach. There was a storm passing offshore and we found relatively big waves. Natalia liked watching all the surfers. I had to work pretty hard to keep Leon from swimming out and joining them.

All told, it was a great week, even if it's not what I had planned. And I'm so glad I went with the change in plans.

Beach Escape

I'm guilty of  being overly optimistic. It makes me a bit of an odd duck in the very serious, analytical world of auditing (as though I wasn't an odd duck there in any other way). But I do believe that there is usually good in everything, and I definitely experienced that on Sunday morning.

For the past few months, I've had a lot of trouble sleeping. I've blamed the lack of sleep on the kids and the dogs, and while they certainly don't help, I know I am to blame. (I am starting to figure out why I'm not sleeping, and that's a whole other topic.) I fall asleep without any problem, but I wake up for the day really early. Sometimes as early as 4:30.

On Sunday morning I woke up at 5:40 to a completely quiet house. No kids tiptoeing around and slamming toilet lids, no doggies pacing to go outside. It was nice. But I was also wide awake and stir crazy. The never ending to do list in my brain was screaming at me to stop wasting time. But what could I possibly do without waking everyone up? Then it occurred to me - I could sneak out for a walk. On the beach. 

I managed to get dressed and out of the house without anyone chasing madly after me. While I was driving to the beach it occurred to me that it was still not light out. I could actually watch a sunrise on the beach. It's a bucket list item that I've wanted to do for years, but I could never make myself plan to get up before 6am on the weekend for fun. That's just wrong. 

I was greeted by a beautiful, quiet beach.

 

I found a place to stash my flip flops and my water bottle, and I took off walking. I walked barefoot on the water's edge, and it was soothing. I was also lost in my thoughts. Thankfully, at one point I realized two girls were sitting on a blanket with their phones up recording something, and if not for them, I would've completely missed the sunrise.  

 

This little guy did not want to miss sunrise either. 

 

I was amazed at how quickly the sun came up, and I'm so glad I got to see it. 

 

And, yes, this experience probably just reinforced my optimism. But is that really all bad?

Christmas 2015

Our Christmas was pretty quiet. After having guests for 9 days, we enjoyed a few days at home by ourselves. And with obscenely warm temperatures, we were able to enjoy our usual late summer/early fall activities. 

The kids asked to go to church on Christmas Eve. Apparently they were going to drag their heathen parents whether we liked it or not! The kids were amazingly good and did a nice job of participating.

Christmas Eve Jeff and I had hoped to go to bed early. However, Ree couldn't sleep and I think her last time to come out for cuddles was at 10:37. Yawn. Poor Santa thought he would never be able to visit our house. It's funny. We thought Ree was on the fence about Santa 2 years ago. So I cooked up a scheme for Santa to bring her a ridiculous gift. Santa brought her a Barbie dream house. It was expensive and enormous. And we had to bring it back from Ohio. That did the trick. 

I sensed some doubt creeping in again this year  (her best friends are all oldest children, so we are sheltered on that front ), but on Christmas Eve it became apparent that any doubt was just due to the mathematical impossibility of it all. We had been watching the Google Santa tracker before bed. Well, technically most of the family was checking it. Leon actually stood there and watched it until we closed the browser window and dragged him away from the computer. Around the time the kids went to bed, Santa had visited over 5 billion households.

Ree was pondering this as she lay awake in bed. So when she asked me about it, I started by saying the magic involved was probably a lot more complicated than they ever show on TV or in books. Then I pulled in math. I argued that Santa has a window from 11pm to 5am to visit each house, and there are 24 time zones in the world so that gives Santa a roughly 30 hour window to make deliveries. That made sense to her and we agreed we probably should've left Santa some strong coffee. Finally, I joked that maybe Santa has a time turner. She laughed and relaxed. Harry Potter for the win!

The kids were given strict orders to stay in their rooms until we got them on Christmas morning. When we weren't quite prompt enough for him, Leon decided to be the human alarm clock. At exactly 7am he opened his door, shouted, "Beep, beep, beep!" and shut the door again. We got the message and were in the kids' rooms by 7:03.

Santa did come (phew!) and the kids loved their gifts. The big kids got Legos and were so busy playing with them that at 9:30 we had to tell them that their little sister might explode if we didn't open gifts soon so they had to stop playing at 10. Then when we did open presents, they wanted to open them one at a time so they could all see what everyone got. Who are these children???

Over the past few days the kids have spent a lot of time playing with their new things. They received several games and a circuit set, so there have even been group activities. We've managed to spend some time outside every day including a Christmas day trip to the park and a beach trip on Sunday.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! 

December Fun

Although Ree has performed in dance recitals before, this weekend was the first time she danced in a full length ballet. She was a reindeer in a production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and she couldn't have been more excited. Last Sunday night she was already excited, and she didn't know if she would be able to survive the wait until Thursday's tech rehearsal. (Her first tech rehearsal! That alone was exciting to her!) Thankfully, she survived the week, she made it through everything, AND it lived up to her expectations. The show was lots of fun and went fairly well and she enjoyed her debut as the reindeer that "dances" the White Witch off the stage to free one of the main characters.

The weather cooperated too, and after spending Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday at the theater, we had a beautiful day in the mid 70s on Sunday. My parents were in town, and it was a perfect excuse to head to the beach. The water was cold, but the kids (and Grandpa Gene!) didn't care. And at least it was warmer than the snowy days in Narnia.

Myrtle Beach

It seems like once the boys hit kindergarten last year, our lives got completely crazy. One of the things that went out the window was blogging on any kind of regular basis, so forgive me for jumping around in time with my posts now. Back in March, as we were packing up to leave our hotel in Myrtle Beach, Mike declared, "Mom! You have to write about this on Nutty Mommy!" Except I didn't. So now, just because Mike asked, I am. But I guess I should back up and start at the beginning.

Last winter it dawned on me that we had never taken the kids on a true vacation. We've traveled out of town to visit family, and we've traveled to weddings, and we've traveled to family weddings, but we've never been anywhere just for fun. With the kids getting four long breaks a year from school, their schedule lends itself well to traveling outside of peak seasons, and the kids are finally big enough that traveling for fun actually seemed like a possibility.

Not wanting to get crazy and spend too much money or venture too far from home the first time we tried this crazy vacation thing, we opted to spend a few days in Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach is less than 90 miles away, and several friends recommended a hotel with an indoor water park. It's not nearly as fancy as a Great Wolf Lodge, but again, when you've never done anything like this before, anything is new and exciting.

The kids were excited, but they also took the trip very seriously. We left in the late morning with plans of stopping at Broadway at the Beach, a giant outdoor mall, for lunch. Leon cracked me up - he was very focused on making sure he had a perfect outfit for this excursion, and he elected to wear a button down shirt and cargo pants. Jeff decided he was dressed perfectly for the occasion, if he was a little old man. The other kids were only slightly less serious in planning their attire.

Because the drive was fairly short, Natalia wasn't completely horrible on the car ride, and we had a great time at Broadway at the Beach, walking around, playing on the playground, and eating lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. The kids even managed to eat all of their food and were very proud of themselves for not having leftovers. After lunch we headed to our hotel, and we pretty much just stayed there for the next two days.

We got a one bedroom suite which worked out great. The bedroom had two queen sized beds, and we gave one to the girls and one to the boys. The kids had their own TV in there, so they were happy to hang out in "their" room. Jeff and I opted for the murphy bed in the living room, which also meant we had access to the kitchen and balcony at night. There was a Food Lion just down the street, and we made daily trips there to pick up stuff for meals so that we only had to eat out once a day. I think we ended up making 5 trips to the hotel's water park over the 2.5 days we were there. The hotel was on the beach, and we even snuck in the first beach trip of the year. We spent one morning checking out more of Myrtle Beach, but other than that, we just relaxed and played. Overall, it was a pretty amazing first vacation. Good enough, in fact, that Natalia has declared that when she grows up she is going to live in Myrtle Beach. (And be a hair dresser.)

Pumpkins

Normally, I love fall. I love all four seasons, and I love the change of seasons. But this year, I haven't been very excited about fall. I think I still want to squeeze in more summer!

That hasn't stopped us from doing fall activities, though. One of our favorites is our annual pumpkin painting. I'm not quite sure how it came to be, but for the past few years in lieu of carving a pumpkin, the kids have each painted their own little pumpkin. They even have a favorite pumpkin patch they like to go to, and they know to look for the "pie pumpkins." 

Over fall break we went to Stone Mountain near Atlanta, and they had pumpkins painted like all kinds of characters - Star Wars, Frozen, and lots and lots of Minions. Leon must have been inspired, because as we were planning our painting this year he said, "I'm going to take it up a notch. Each year I've just painted a design, but this year I'm going to paint a face."

After buying out most of the craft paint at Walmart, the kids spent last Sunday afternoon engaged in some serious pumpkin painting. The pumpkins turned out cute, even if they weren't quite as fancy as the ones at Stone Mountain. 

Oh, and we managed to get a beach trip in this Sunday. I realized it was the first time I felt sand between my toes since we had friends visit in mid-September. It was wonderful. And now I'm almost ready for fall...

Saturday

Completely unexpectedly, Saturday turned into a perfect day.  As Jeff said, you only get maybe 10 of those in your lifetime.  I am glad I got to share mine with my family.

It started off as a regular day.   I had a nightmare about Ree's upcoming birthday party and woke up at 4:30 and was wide awake.  I tried to fall back asleep but the inevitable disasters of having seven creatures under one roof happened.  I was finally falling back asleep around 5:30 when Michael decided to get up for the day at 5:40.  I let him lay in bed and moan (he can't cry or whine like a normal child, he moans) for awhile.  By 6:00, both he and Leon were crying so I got them up.  After much drama, I got them out the door around 6:15, and we took a walk around the neighborhood.  Leon was thrilled.  Michael moaned.  I cut the walk short and headed for home.  When we got home, Michael screamed.  Apparently going home wasn't the right answer either.  When we went inside, I carried Michael straight to his high chair and started feeding him, even though the plan was to go out to breakfast.  I went ahead and fed Leon too.

Those two made enough of a ruckus that it wasn't long before Jeff and Ree were up.  As it turns out, everyone was dressed, and we were out the door before 8:00 for breakfast.  I don't know if we've ever taken the whole crew out to breakfast before aside from eating at McDonald's while traveling, but Jeff and I had watched a special on PBS last week on breakfast places, and it just seemed like the thing to do.

We went to IHOP and got there early enough that we were able to get a table right away that was big enough for our crew including two high chairs.  Ree and Leon were quite happy to look at their menus.  Ree colored on hers and Leon ate his crayons.  Michael started to throw a temper tantrum.  I feared it was just going to be a long day. Thankfully, before too long, I was able to dig a box of raisins out of the diaper bag, and those ended Michael's moaning.  I was afraid it was only a temporary fix, but miraculously, that was the last of his major meltdowns for the day.

Breakfast was fabulous, and on the way home, we discussed heading to Tospsail Island, which is about 30 miles from our house.  We had never been there before, but there was a surfing competition at the beach closest to our house, so we decided it would be a good day to explore. 

We got everyone into swimsuits and slathered with sunscreen and we headed back out the door.  Both boys fell asleep on the way to the beach, and Ree happily looked out the window.  She didn't remember driving that way before, and we drove past fields of corn and a little town she has never seen.  She happily commented on it all.  The boys were still asleep when we got to the island, so we drove the length of the island which includes three towns. They woke up as we were wrapping up our driving tour, and they actually woke up happy.  This beach has free parking, and we were able to find a spot in a lot that has a ramp, which is a necessity for getting our crew out onto the sand.

To get from the car to the beach, the boys ride in the wagon with blankets and towels piled on them, and Jeff does his best to tug them along through the sand.  I hold Ree's hand and the rest of the gear, and together we all stumble towards the water.  Thankfully, it turns out, our car was probably within 100 feet of where we plopped down, so we only had to do a minimum amount of stumbling.

There were other people around, but the beach was by no means crowded, and it was a perfect place to play. We spent two hours there before we decided to leave prior to anyone having a complete meltdown.

We attempted to eat lunch at a Dairy Queen but discovered that although their menu listed hot food, they really only sold ice cream.  This turned out to be a great thing because Jeff was driving and excited to explore, and we ended up at a great little 1950s style diner.  The place only accepted cash, and amazingly, we had enough on us to pay the bill. 

The kids fell asleep on the car ride home, and Jeff and I got a chance to just chat.  Ree had been disappointed that we didn't get dessert at the diner, especially since we were seated next to the ice cream case.  We decided to stop at her favorite ice cream place when we got back to Wilmington, and when she woke up, we were in the Boombalatti's parking lot.  She was a happy girl.

We feared that the kids would fall apart at home, but they actually had a good evening.  We had been on a crazy eating schedule (lunch at 2:30 and ice cream at 4:00), so the kids ended up eating a really late dinner.  Still, we managed to get everyone to bed by 9:00.  It was our anniversary, so Jeff and I then got to spend some time by ourselves after the kids went to bed.  Remarkably, the kids let us enjoy that time by ourselves and weren't constantly up checking in to make sure we were still there and they weren't missing anything.  Overall the day was...perfect.