So we actually took a vacation this year. We went to Harbor Island, SC and stayed with my in-laws in a house on the beach. Like ON the beach. The water came up to the retaining walls at high tide. Super cool. And not only was the location awesome…we drove to the beach with four kids, aged 7, 7, 5 & 3. So…in honor of surviving our first real family vacation, here are some of my random thoughts on the week.
1. Car trips with small children.
This went SO much better than I’d imagined it would go. I pushed down vague images of meltdowns and tried to prepare. I took lots of little things which came out along the way and not all at once. We bought new movies to watch. LOTS of library books. I found a lego idea that worked really well, and I used dry-erase sleeves to create reusable packets of mazes, hidden pictures and games (like tic-tac-toe). There was boredom, but they handled the 12-hour drive like champs. Okay, at one point, I did order Timmy to nap, but even he rode pretty easily. I was very, very impressed. And grateful.
2. Beach Stuff
It was fun to hear people’s reactions/advice to the news that we were going to the beach. “Are you driving?” Yep. “You’re driving at night, right?” Nope. “Make sure you have your camera for the first time they see the ocean.” Check.
When we did finally arrive (the in-laws were already there and checked in), we wen’t pretty much straight to the ocean. Timmy ran through the whole house, down the path, and to the water, repeating, “This is the best day of my life!” It was pretty awesome. We did get wet in our clothes. Timmy was not at all sure about the water creeping up on his feet at first. Megan went it immediately. And we did get pictures.
There were morning walks to look for shells almost every day, and evening beach walks, too. Crabs, washed-up jellyfish, and miscellaneous slimy things were revolting and attracting all at once. The dolphins swam offshore every day, pods of 4-6 of them, following the shrimping boats. They were so cool to watch.
We swam in the ocean most mornings as the tide came in, lunched and rested, and then swam in the community pool in the late afternoons. Timmy finally got the nerve to actually jump into the water, and he could keep his head above the 3 ft. depth, so he jumped over and over and over. At one point, I saw, out of the corner or my eye, a child flip into the pool, splashing back-first. I spun to Eric, “Please tell me that was NOT one of ours.” Oh yeah. It was Megan. Of course it was. She was forbidden to do that again. 🙂
Thankfully, Timmy potty-trained this summer so he could swim in the big pool. All babies with swim diapers had to stay in the wading pool, which would NOT have been fun. I was glad to be done with such things. And the big kids went with their dad and grandma into the deeper water and gained a TON of confidence. He showed them how to let themselves get to the bottom and push themselves back up. They all swam from deeper water to me and back and forth across the deeper water. They even got in the deepest waters and found they could handle themselves (with daddy’s supervision). It was fun.
We went to Hunting Island one day, a fun state park with a neat old lighthouse. The beach there had pretty big waves, so we didn’t swim. Megan was smart enough to know she couldn’t handle the climb to the lighthouse. I thought maybe I could. Um…not so much. Didn’t even make the second landing. Oh well. The other 3 went with Daddy and Grandpa to the top (181 steps) in about 4 minutes and ran straight to the rail and looked down. I just pretended I was okay with that.
We found keychains at the shop there, one for each kid. With their name on it. Eric said we won the Name-Your-Child award for that one. 🙂 And we watched South Carolina cardinals fight over crumbs. They looked scruffy, dull-colored, and small compared to our Ohio corn-fed cardinals. But it was cool to watch anyway.
We also went to a kazoo factory. Everyone took bets that I’d break first and order all the buzzing to stop. But I didn’t! Timmy did. He was not a fan of the carful of kazoos on the way home. But if you are ever in Beaufort, SC, the kazoo tour was absolutely worth the $5 a person to go. Fun and educational. And we each made our own kazoo. Very cool!
Other highlights. I read two books in two days, or so. I found a 550-piece puzzle on clearance and took it along to do while we were there. And it worked really well. Small enough to not take the whole time; big enough to be a challenge. There was a bunk bed in the kids room. Erin made sure there was a plan and schedule as to who would sleep where on which nights. It was a big deal to be on the top bunk!
We came home on Thursday. It took 13 hours to get home, but we took longer meal times, actually stopping to eat. And we knew where we were going, so getting home after dark wasn’t such a big deal. But it was our first real vacation…and I think it was a surprising success.
Guess I should start planning the next one… 😉
