Beach Fun!

We were blessed to have two adventures to the beach this Summer... and obviously with baby Joel's due date closing in, it will be the last beach adventures of the Summer.  (Though we haven't ruled out a Fall trip with baby in tow.)

Anyway, our first trip was at the end of May to Myrtle Beach in SC with some friends of ours.  We went with them last year as well and it was a good time together-- the kids have fun playing and the adults get to relax and hang out.  Naturally since I'm pregnant, one of my sole goals while there was to find good eats and this year they were certainly found!  There are some new (and old) restaurants that are now added to my vacation list so that we can visit them again in the future.

There was a definite LACK of pictures this year.  Part of that is the boys flat out refusal to participate in many, and a big part of that was me leaving the camera behind in the room.  I can't deny that I feel a little guilty about it and will be kicking myself at the end of the year when I'm putting together our annual end of year photo album... BUT at the same time, it also means that I was enjoying the moments live and relaxing a little bit too and I can't feel too bad about that. Right?

The next trip was the end of June to visit Daniel's mom on the NC coast for a weekend.  She moved East last year, and while it's nice to have a coastal connection, we GREATLY miss her here and love to soak up any quality time that we can get together.  It was a much awaited trip with countdowns beginning for the boys three weeks out.

We tried to pack in as much fun as we could into the weekend, and also included some more good eats of course too!

We went to the aquarium, which was really cool because we happened to arrive on an afternoon that they had divers in the aquarium teaching us about the sharks and fish.  AND it also happened to be shark feeding day which only happens twice a week!

We swam at Grandma's pool, and also went to see the movie "Inside Out".

... And we spent a day on the beach!  No shark sitings thankfully.  The closest we got to a predator was a sand crab that I almost sat on trying to take pictures of the boys. Ha!  That would have been a nice vacation story. 

These trips were SUCH a blessing!  There was a time when we went years with absolutely NO vacation, so to be able to head to the beach twice this Summer, we feel absolutely spoiled and lots of wonderful memories were made.  Now however as I near the 35 week mark, we will be sticking close to home and waiting on baby Joel to make his big debut.... still soaking up as much sun as we can though!  Hope you all are being spoiled by the Summer as well!