Lazy, Hazy Days At the Beach

After much discussion, we decided to take our first family vacation, just the four of us. We've always had so much fun on past vacations with family and friends, but decided that this year we'd try something new. I have to admit that I was concerned about spending a week together, but it turns out that our boys do enjoy spending time together and CAN treat one another kindly. We had an amazing week together. We spent most days at the beach, pools and lazy river. Dinner was usually decided on a whim and we returned to the resort for either a walk on the beach or swim, but ALWAYS ended our day with a rousing family game of Dutch Blitz.

The boys--North Myrtle Beach, SC--June 2010

A hazy view of our resort complex and ...

views from our oceanfront balcony.

The weather during our stay was picture perfect; perhaps a little hot, but that's why the ocean was at our toes.

The boys and I enjoyed building sand castles. I even managed to build a bridge for a moat around Noah's castle (hmmm...where's that picture?)

Digging in the sand and preparing for raft riding fun.

We took a break from the beach our last day and visited the new boardwalk in Myrtle Beach. We walked out to the end of Pier 14 and enjoyed the ocean spray and listening to the roar of the waves. The pictures below are taken from Pier 14 showing the hotel resorts dotting the Myrtle Beach coast. North Myrtle Beach is farther up the coast--you can just begin to see the buildings between Noah and Alexander in the 2nd picture below.

Not only was the beach busy with people walking, jogging, digging and just plain relaxing, the skies above were busy too with parasailers and an endless stream of planes boasting one bargain or another :).

I was sitting on the beach one day, very relaxed in my cozy beach chair, and looked up the beach to see the view below. The bright colors of the umbrellas lined up almost perfectly captured my attention, so I quickly grabbed my "little" camera and snapped away.

Noah, boogie board in hand, preparing to ride the waves. There were some GREAT waves this year! Of course, having one crash on top of you, heading crashing into the sand, tumbling below the water like seaweed as you inhale salt water--not so fun. Thankfully that only happened to Mom, once--the rest of the time we floated on the inner tubes and rode the waves up and down.

After the boys felt they had had "enough" of the beach and waves, they rushed to the lazy river and would float for at least an hour, if not more, around and around the "river". Trey and I relaxed in the "river" too.

We discovered, before leaving, that friends from Columbus were vacationing in Myrtle Beach the same week as us. So, we made arrangements to get together for dinner one evening. Our first choice, "Margaritaville", had a 4.5 hour wait for dinner, so we opted to try our luck at Planet Hollywood.

On our last night, I braved taking my "fancy" camera to the beach and took this shot--one of the last photos from our North Myrtle Beach vacation. Earlier in the day, we treated the boys to T-shirts and shark tooth necklaces.