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We braved a beach vacation with the three little ones (Farah 5, Blake 2, and Lenah 8 months). The amount of things we had to pack was mind boggling. We even decided to pack enough food for snacks and making lunches. We had some good times-watching Blake's first reaction to the ocean, Farah braving the deeper waters and swimming in the waves, Lenah chowing down on sand. But there were some bumpy moments as well! We decided to leave on Sunday night and drive for a few hours in the evening, so we'd be closer for the next day. We're only talking about a 4 hour total drive, but 4 hours with 3 screaming kids feels like an eternity! We stayed near Richmond in a pretty nice hotel with a separate room for us. Well, Farah and Blake went down easily in the front room, and Heath, Lenah and I were in the bedroom. Heath wanted to stay up late, so he was on one bed with his laptop watching movies, while I slept on the other queen bed. At 2:30 in the morning, Heath sloooowly opened the loudest Triscuit box known to man. He couldn't hear it apparently because of his headphones, but he must have thought opening it slowly would make it better. After countless minutes of crinkling, I wanted to throw the box out of the window. After that even the chewing was keeping me up, not to mention the light from the monitor. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it through the night alive.
(I'm trying to insert paragraph breaks, but they don't seem to be working for some reason, so I'll just stick a bunch of photos between the paragraphs.) When we got to the beach we were wowed by our hotel suite. It was at the top of the hotel and had a great kitchenette with a full refrigerator and table, two couches, and three balconies. We just knew that this was going to be a fabulous few days after getting a look at our hotel room. Heath even suggested booking another night...little did he know he'd be begging to go back to work in a few short days.
We had a great first trip to the beach, ate dinner in, and had an early night. All in all, a good first day at the beach. The second day started early and ended late. We realized vacationing with three children means you are essentially a pack mule and a slave to snacks, meal and nap times. We were constantly looking for sunscreen, pacifiers, Blake's missing Croc, the one and only bathing suit Farah would wear, the dress to the miniature doll she got on the boardwalk. You name it, we searched for it and then hauled it around, and then searched for it again. I think things came to a peak when we rented surreys for a ride on the boardwalk. This was my most favorite part of our previous VA Beach vacations-driving on the boardwalk, getting ice cream, watching concerts, and letting the kids play in the sand playground. Well, this surrey was defective (or at least Heath thought so). The pedals were a little stiff, but Heath was getting angrier and angrier the more he tried to pedal. When we got passed by another family going twice as fast as us, I think that was when he had it. He abandoned the surrey by the Neptune statue and we had to hoof it back. I tried to salvage the moment by stopping with the kids to hear a dramatic retelling of a sunken ship off of Virginia's coast hundreds of years ago. The kids were actually riveted by the story.
The next night proved to be better. We saw a circus performance and were pleasantly surprised by fireworks over the beach. At one point Blake was strutting around with his shirt up entertaining half of the audience! The kids, all in all, were complete troopers. Don't get me wrong, they did have their moments, but I think the cumulative effect of three kids having bad moments, plus the heat, plus all of our gear, had a corrosive effect on our nerves. We also managed to find the most boring museum on the entire east coast, some aviation museum run by very grouchy, very old men. For some reason there were massive dinosaur statues out front that had a redeeming effect for the kids, and probably taught them that dinosaurs roamed the earth the same time as WWI airplanes.
Nothing could top our drive home though. I had a really great morning with just the big kids, splashing in the ocean while Lenah napped. We took them to the aquarium, which is always a good time. We got on the road at 3:30, and Heath just knew that we were doomed to spend hours in traffic. In one of his less rational moments, he suggested we just pull over for two hours, because that's what the roads were going to be like. I never said I told you so, but we never hit any major traffic on the way home. What we did hit might have upset Heath more than traffic ever could...strange car noises. Heath tied wagons and things to the top of the car and they made a noise similar to that of a motorcycle following too closely behind us. It drove him crazy, but Farah and Blake were relaxing with a movie on and Lenah was fast asleep, so I threatened him within an inch of his life not to pull over and disrupt this rare peace. It did prove to be more than he could bear, so he pulled over and rearranged things. As we pulled away, the kids were still relatively peaceful, and I admit that it was nice not feeling like a Harley Davison was in our trunk. But as soon as we hit 60 mph, a far worse, loud, high pitched whining noise began. In the midst of this new development, Heath missed the fork to stay on 64 and ended up on an inner loop taking us through Hampton Roads and Newport News, over bridges, through tunnels, and in general slowing down our trip. We still had the fact that all three kids were quiet going for us, but the noise was now driving us both to madness. We found that if we stayed under 60 mph that the noise was gone, so we creeped down the wrong route as slowly as possible, again trying to maintain the fragile quiet that we had been blessed with. Finally, not being able to stand one more eighteen wheeler passing him, Heath pulled over for gas and took everything off the top of the car. As he was unstrapping our excessive baggage, Lenah stirred, then Blake, and finally Farah. At one point they were all three completely hysterical from being awaken from their precious naps. The good news is that they did calm back down, but only Lenah continued to sleep (and she did so almost the entire way home). The bad news is when we returned home, very late at night, we found Heath hadn't factored in the massive heat wave that had come through while we were gone and turned the air conditioner off. We were all tired and grouchy and our house was a warm 95 degrees at 10:30 at night. Home sweet home.
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(I'm trying to insert paragraph breaks, but they don't seem to be working for some reason, so I'll just stick a bunch of photos between the paragraphs.) When we got to the beach we were wowed by our hotel suite. It was at the top of the hotel and had a great kitchenette with a full refrigerator and table, two couches, and three balconies. We just knew that this was going to be a fabulous few days after getting a look at our hotel room. Heath even suggested booking another night...little did he know he'd be begging to go back to work in a few short days.
We had a great first trip to the beach, ate dinner in, and had an early night. All in all, a good first day at the beach. The second day started early and ended late. We realized vacationing with three children means you are essentially a pack mule and a slave to snacks, meal and nap times. We were constantly looking for sunscreen, pacifiers, Blake's missing Croc, the one and only bathing suit Farah would wear, the dress to the miniature doll she got on the boardwalk. You name it, we searched for it and then hauled it around, and then searched for it again. I think things came to a peak when we rented surreys for a ride on the boardwalk. This was my most favorite part of our previous VA Beach vacations-driving on the boardwalk, getting ice cream, watching concerts, and letting the kids play in the sand playground. Well, this surrey was defective (or at least Heath thought so). The pedals were a little stiff, but Heath was getting angrier and angrier the more he tried to pedal. When we got passed by another family going twice as fast as us, I think that was when he had it. He abandoned the surrey by the Neptune statue and we had to hoof it back. I tried to salvage the moment by stopping with the kids to hear a dramatic retelling of a sunken ship off of Virginia's coast hundreds of years ago. The kids were actually riveted by the story.
The next night proved to be better. We saw a circus performance and were pleasantly surprised by fireworks over the beach. At one point Blake was strutting around with his shirt up entertaining half of the audience! The kids, all in all, were complete troopers. Don't get me wrong, they did have their moments, but I think the cumulative effect of three kids having bad moments, plus the heat, plus all of our gear, had a corrosive effect on our nerves. We also managed to find the most boring museum on the entire east coast, some aviation museum run by very grouchy, very old men. For some reason there were massive dinosaur statues out front that had a redeeming effect for the kids, and probably taught them that dinosaurs roamed the earth the same time as WWI airplanes.
Nothing could top our drive home though. I had a really great morning with just the big kids, splashing in the ocean while Lenah napped. We took them to the aquarium, which is always a good time. We got on the road at 3:30, and Heath just knew that we were doomed to spend hours in traffic. In one of his less rational moments, he suggested we just pull over for two hours, because that's what the roads were going to be like. I never said I told you so, but we never hit any major traffic on the way home. What we did hit might have upset Heath more than traffic ever could...strange car noises. Heath tied wagons and things to the top of the car and they made a noise similar to that of a motorcycle following too closely behind us. It drove him crazy, but Farah and Blake were relaxing with a movie on and Lenah was fast asleep, so I threatened him within an inch of his life not to pull over and disrupt this rare peace. It did prove to be more than he could bear, so he pulled over and rearranged things. As we pulled away, the kids were still relatively peaceful, and I admit that it was nice not feeling like a Harley Davison was in our trunk. But as soon as we hit 60 mph, a far worse, loud, high pitched whining noise began. In the midst of this new development, Heath missed the fork to stay on 64 and ended up on an inner loop taking us through Hampton Roads and Newport News, over bridges, through tunnels, and in general slowing down our trip. We still had the fact that all three kids were quiet going for us, but the noise was now driving us both to madness. We found that if we stayed under 60 mph that the noise was gone, so we creeped down the wrong route as slowly as possible, again trying to maintain the fragile quiet that we had been blessed with. Finally, not being able to stand one more eighteen wheeler passing him, Heath pulled over for gas and took everything off the top of the car. As he was unstrapping our excessive baggage, Lenah stirred, then Blake, and finally Farah. At one point they were all three completely hysterical from being awaken from their precious naps. The good news is that they did calm back down, but only Lenah continued to sleep (and she did so almost the entire way home). The bad news is when we returned home, very late at night, we found Heath hadn't factored in the massive heat wave that had come through while we were gone and turned the air conditioner off. We were all tired and grouchy and our house was a warm 95 degrees at 10:30 at night. Home sweet home.
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