Beach "Vacation"

Whew.

I now understand when people say that a trip is when you go away with your family and a vacation is when you go without kids.  I'm exhausted. This last week has been fun, but I'm glad to be home.  The boys were not only a handful, but Brian ended up not coming down on the weekend because rain was in the forecast (and I thought it ridiculous to drive 6 hours to sit in the house).  The fun started on Tuesday with a 6 hour drive with a 5 year old and 1 year old who didn't understand why he had to stay in his car seat so long.  Good times.  Throw in a nauseated grandpa (I'm sure from my driving) and bad directions and we were all just downright chipper.  :)  When we finally made it to the beach house, we were all too tired to go back into town to get groceries for an actual dinner, so we ate rice krispie treats and other various snacks.  We got the groceries out of the way on Wednesday and started out to test out the sand and waves.  Neither of the boys had ever been to the ocean, so I was anxious to see how they would react.  Reed wasn't too excited about the water (it wasn't clear and he was afraid of the "fish" which I think meant sharks - he watches too much Discovery channel with his daddy).  However, he LOVED the sand.  He spent the majority of the trip digging, making sand castles and just plain getting dirty.  Hudson didn't care for the sand, but loved the water.  He would kick his little chubby legs like crazy when the waves hit him - so cute.  He loved low tide when he could run around and splash without falling down.  One funny thing about Hudson - when we would take him down to the beach in the middle of the day and he hadn't had a nap, he would get whiny and want us to hold him, then he would promptly fall asleep!   As the week progressed, Hudson got whinier (I believe for a lack of toys and his familiar surroundings) and by our last night, he was crying out a lot and I only slept about 4 1/2 hours. Follow that with 7 hours in the car (yes, it took longer to get home than the trip down - we missed a turn), and I am beat.  It might take me a few days to get the pictures posted, but at least we made it back home in one piece.  Gotta love "vacation".  :)