VACATION!

We've been a little MIA this past month.  I'll blame it on not having a very good camera, a computer that's having issues, and having too much fun to sit down and blog.  :-)  So I am trying to play catch up. 

In August we took a 3 day vacation down to Norfolk and Virginia Beach.  Lauren also came with her kiddos (Evan had to work).

We started off by visiting the Battleship Wisconsin at Nauticus    

Abby is posing here.  This picture kinda creeps me out with the shadowing. 

The kids weren't huge fans of the museum until we found this area with legos and boats to play in. 

Kayla liked the legos. 

Up next was the shark tank. 

I don't remember what kind of sharks these are, but they were all full grown.  The kids liked being that close and even got to feel real shark skin. 

Onto the Battleship! 

Landon didn't want to tour the rest of the battleship, so he stayed with me and Kayla.  We had fun playing I Spy and guessing where our hotel was. 

Our little mermaid

One of the things we did while waiting for dinner was walk the halls.  Kayla was getting stir crazy, so we just started roaming the hallway.  Abby and Riya came with me.  We walked back and forth all different ways.  Sideways, backwards, skipping...etc. 

The second day of our vacation was our trip to the beach.  We first tried the beach at Norfolk, but Andrew wasn't impressed.  So we drove to Virginia Beach.  The weather was gorgeous!  Naturally we had a lot of crap with us, so I waited outside some random hotel with 5 of the 6 kids and all the stuff while Lauren and Andrew parked the cars.  Then we hauled all our stuff to the beach and got set up.  We had 2 tents with us, a bunch of beach chairs, cooler, many sand toys, 3 boogie boards, etc.  Kayla loved the water and got upset whenever we brought her back up to the beach. 

This is where it gets interesting.  Andrew was getting ready to take Carson out to try his boogie board in the surf.  I was sitting in a beach chair holding Kayla while she ate.  Parker (Lauren's 5 month old son) was lying in the other beach tent happily playing.  The girls were playing in the sand and Lauren had left to take Landon to the bathroom.  Before Andrew left, I asked him to get me something from the cooler.  As he walks over to the cooler, Lauren's beach tent comes unstaked and flies up!  As it is flying off the ground, one of the poles hits Kayla smack on the head and then lands on top of our beach tent (the one that has Parker inside).  Kayla, however, starts bleeding A LOT!  I grab a beach towel, hold it to her head and scream for Andrew to come help me.  Kayla is bawling and I'm trying not to panic.  People around us run over and help get the larger tent off the smaller one.  I run over and grab Parker out to check him out.  Lauren's tent broke ours, but miraculously Parker is uninjured.  Other people start taking our tent down and someone flags down a lifeguard.  He asks Andrew if we want an ambulance and Andrew said yes.  We had no idea how bad Kayla's head wound was.  I see Lauren coming and yell at her to hurry.  She sees all the madness and comes running with Landon.  Once she gets back I see the ambulance has arrived.  I take Kayla to the ambulance while Lauren and Andrew deal with everything else.  By the time we get to the rig, Kayla's head has stopped bleeding.  It was a very small cut and wasn't deep enough to need stitches.  While I am holding an ice pack on her head, she falls asleep.  I sat with her in the ambulance while she slept until Andrew had packed everything up.  The EMTs were very nice to us and took great care of Kayla.  Shout out to the Virginia Beach Volunteer Ambulance Squad!  I have a great appreciation for volunteer EMTs. 

So our beach day was cut short, but the kids were good sports about it.  Since I didn't get a picture of Kayla during her tragic accident, here's a picture of her an hour later back at the hotel.       

You wouldn't look at her little scar on her head and guess that a tent pole flew and hit her would you? 

So happy to sit and eat a fruit roll up and crackers. 

This is the beach towel I grabbed to hold on her head.  I count my blessings every night because I know that we were protected that day.  What could have been a very tragic day with Kayla, Parker and possibly the other kids getting hurt resulted in a minute scar on Kayla's head and a broken beach tent.  In order to redeem ourselves for making the kids leave the beach, we rode the light rail (called The Tide) to the mall and ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  There was a station about a block from our hotel and was super cheap.  Carson still has his ticket stub from the ride.     

So what does one do after a day like that?  Go to Busch Gardens!  On our last day we drove to Busch Gardens.  It was a wonderful day and the kids were excellent!  Parker slept in his stroller for quite a while, the lines weren't long and the kids behaved well.   

 

Riding the magical dragons

Riding the train around the park

We met Elmo for the second time.  Our first time we lost the pictures when we lost our camera. 

We met Zoe for the second time. 

The kids also met Cookie Monster, but those pictures are on Lauren's camera. 

Whew!  It was a crazy three days, but somehow we survived and managed to have fun there too.  It would have been a lot easier if we had more adults there.  We'll plan better for next time.