Monday Praises Link-Up: Thanks to the Lord for Rest!

It’s time for our Monday Praises Link-up!  Many thanks to http://www.walkhumblywithgod.wordpress.com for hosting!

 

I have been relating to this cartoon a little bit lately:

Having a 2 and 4 year-old is hard work.  So is being a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a church member, and the list goes on and on and on.  I get tired sometimes!

So today I am going to praise the Lord for a much-needed, much-deserved vacation with my family!  Whew, it is easy to get caught up in the business of life, isn’t it?  I have definitely been leading more of a Martha, instead of Mary, life.

As I am writing this post, I am sitting in my bed in Bonlee after a long day of cleaning and packing and child-rearing, but as you are reading it, I will have this view in front of me:

This pic is from our last beach trip-my toes are now neon orange!

I am taking this vacation so seriously that I am packing no computer or Kindle, and I hope to go days without my phone!  It will be awesome!

Read these words of Jesus himself:

And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while.” For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. Mark 6:31

God means for us to take some time to rest, to reflect, and to spend some time with Him.  I can just imagine him sitting in Heaven waiting to hear from me!  He created us to spend time with him, after all. He doesn’t want us to be lazy, but He also wants us to rest and restore our bodies and our minds.

I want to thank God today for giving us the means to take a vacation, to rest our bodies and restore our souls.  I thank Him for a wonderful family who we get to spend time with and enjoy on our vacation.  I thank Him for giving me permission to rest from the world for a few days.

*Hopefully I can link-up to Monday Praises from my phone!  If not, I will link-up when we get home.

 

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A Vacation from my Vacation

Whew!  We made it home from the beach, and man do I need a vacation!  Being at the beach for a week with the family is wonderful, but it is hard work for the mommies involved.  Thank goodness Mama and Casey were there to share in the burden!

I know Jason is exhausted.  He hauled all of our things back and forth from the beach every day and afternoon with hardly any help, not to mention all of the time he spent trying to catch some fish for our dinner.  He is snoring on the couch as I type this up!

While I, of course, love being on vacation, I really love coming home from vacation.  I enjoy our home and my bed and our pets. It is always fun this time of year to return home and see how our garden and flowers have grown.

I spent some time cutting flowers from my cutting garden where I have zinnias, cosmos, mexican sunflowers, and some other random wildflowers growing.  I also was happy to see that all of my hydrangeas are blooming.  They range in color from bright pink to dark purple to a really bright, almost electric blue.  I cut a bunch of the blue for my bedroom.

I love hydrangeas!

I am going to definitely have to do some work in our garden this week, but it is totally worth it.  Our squash has finally begun to come in so we had some to pick when we got home today.

I went to Mama’s to help her pick green beans, and also lucked out and got some tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots!

Charlie and I snapped the beans while he watched his Superman cartoon tonight, and I can’t wait to cook them tomorrow!

We had a wonderful vacation, but I am glad to be home so I can get some rest!

 

Fun Things for Kids on the Beach

Tomorrow is our last full day of vacation!  As usual, time has just flown by.  We have been having a great time, but like any mother on vacation, I feel like I am going to need a vacation to recover from this vacation!

Last week as I was preparing for our beach trip, I spent a little time on Pinterest looking for some new ideas of things to bring to the beach for the kids to play with during our long days on the beach.  I was a little disappointed that every article said basically the same things:  buckets and shovels with a reminder to take plenty of juice so the kids stay hydrated.  Duh!

We take long beach trips since houses on the coast rent for a week at a time during the summer season.  We usually spend all day on the beach, so we need lots of things for the kids to do.

The beach in itself is its own entertainment.  You can jump in the waves, hunt for shells and sharks teeth (which have been in abundance in front of our house), dig holes, and build sandcastles.  However, with a 1-year old, 2-year old, 4-year old, and 2 11-year olds, you need to have a wide variety of entertainment options available to keep whining and complaining to a minimum.

Here are a few things we bring along to the beach to make our trip a little more enjoyable:

1.  A five-gallon bucket.  Sure, it is nice to have some smaller buckets for sand castles, but the bigger buckets are like little swimming pools for children.  You can dig them into piles of sand to make them secure, fill them with water, and the kids have a place to lounge when they get hot or to wash off their hands if they need to.  We actually brought 2 this time!

2.  Different sizes of shovels.  This is really important for digging huge holes and tunnels in the sand.  This year, Jason even brought our huge garden shovel, and it has been a lifesaver!  If all you have are the little plastic shovels, you won’t be able to do too much digging, and the bigger the hole the better!  The kids spend hours playing in these holes, and you can actually SIT at the edge of the hole.

3. A tarp or some sort of plastic sheeting.  I know this sounds crazy, but with this simple thing you can make an oceanfront pool!  Dig a hole, line it with the tarp, and fill it up with water!  If you have very small kids and don’t want them right at the water’s edge, this is great for them to have to play in! If you wanted to get really fancy, you could bring a little kiddie pool and take it on the beach.

4. Little fishing poles.  You can buy these for just a few dollars and the kids love “fishing” in the surf with them.  Of course, you don’t really put a hook on the line!

5. Toy dump trucks, tractors, and bulldozers.  I didn’t get a pic of this, but it’s fun to move the sand around on the beach with these.

I know it will take up a little extra space in the car to drag all of these things to the beach, but if you’re getting a house for a week like us, it is totally worth it!

 

 

 

Surf City Pics

Hi everyone!  I hope you are all doing well and having a great week so far.

We are finishing up our third day of vacation at Surf City.  We really like this beach so far and are having a great time. The house we rented is right on the beach, and I mean RIGHT ON the beach.  The front of the house is actually built into the sand dune.  This is so convenient for me, because if I forget something or someone has to use the potty, it is no big deal to get back to the house. When you are at the beach with a 2-year old and 4-year old (plus Emma, who is 1), things like that make a big difference!

Aaron and Noah joined us today, so we have a full house.  Charlie is so excited to have them here.  I can’t wait to see the fun they will have on the beach tomorrow.

After a wonderful dinner of grilled shrimp and mahi mahi tonight, we walked down the beach to the pier, got some ice cream, and walked to the end of the pier.  I wish I had taken my camera because it was absolutely gorgeous!

Here are some pics from the past couple of days:

Charlie doing some serious fishing on the beach.

All of that fishing obviously wore Jason and Charlie out!

Maddie and her shovel

Jason spent a LOT of time digging holes on the beach! The kids love it!

Emma on the beach

Emma loved sitting in the bucket of water.

These kids are crazy!

Casey and Emma looking for sharks teeth on the beach. We found tons!

I love this pic of Jason and Charlie sitting in the HUGE hole they dug!

My toes!!!

Charlie was so excited when Jason buried him in the sand!

Now my goal for tomorrow is to have someone take some pics with ME in them!

Our Winter Getaway

Whew, life has been busy for us lately!  Between Jason’s work, turning over the duplex, family obligations, and many, many other things, I have been feeling like our little family has just not been quite together.  I decided a few weeks ago that we needed to get away for a quick weekend at the beach to just enjoy each other without all of the distractions of everyday life.  Since it is still technically winter and pretty cold, I found a great resort at Myrtle Beach that features 2 indoor water parks.  While it was a little strange for us to be at the beach this time of year, we had an absolutely wonderful weekend!

Charlie and Maddie were so excited! We have been telling them for a couple of weeks that were were going to the beach, so they were happy that the day had finally arrived.

It was cold but still sunny and gorgeous. We were very cold running back and forth between the two water parks! Luckily, all of the water was heated.

There were tons of birds on the beach and floating in the water.

Jason and Maddie-Jason is always so photogenic.

We went to Broadway at the Beach Saturday night and had dinner at the Key West Grill. There were pirates everywhere so Charlie loved it!

After playing at the water parks all day on Saturday, we went to Broadway at the Beach for an early dinner.  We had a wonderful meal at the Key West Grill.  Because of the time of year and the odd hour that we were eating, we were almost alone in the restaurant!  For anyone who has been out to dinner with a 2-year old and a 3-year old, you will understand that this was ideal.  My only regret is that I ordered a cup instead of a bowl of she-crab soup.  It was so good and Maddie ate half of mine!

Feeding the fish and ducks.

Maddie was afraid of all of the seagulls that were walking around us. She refused to walk by them, so Charlie scared them all off.

 

Charlie on a T-Rex.

Riding the cars at the “Pavilion.”

A few of the rides from the old Myrtle Beach Pavilion have been moved here.  Charlie and Maddie loved riding the cars.  Jason and I kept telling the kids, “When we were little the Pavilion…….” and finally it hit us that we were old!  Myrtle Beach has changed a lot since were were little kids.

Charlie in his new bed that Jason created for him.

We had such a great time this weekend.  I started to get the after-vacation blues when we got home today, then realized that I don’t technically have to go to work tomorrow and I got over it!  I am so blessed to have the husband and kids that I do, and we live a really great life.  I am so thankful for that.  Sometimes it just takes a weekend to get over life!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• Road Trip!: Indoor water parks (triblive.com)

Summer Update

Wow, this summer is flying by!  We are having a great time so far.  Charlie is 3, yes 3!  Just saying that I have a 3-year old sounds strange to me.  He had a fire truck birthday party, which turned into a naked fireman party by the end.  We had a blast, and Charlie got his first bike!

On Charlie’s actual birthday, May 20th, we went with our church youth group to the Aloha Safari Zoo, a zoo in Sanford that rescues exotic animals.  It was so cool.  Charlie and Maddie got to feed and pet a giraffe, and we rode on a “safari” (really a few trailors being pulled by a tractor) on a path through fields of zebras, llamas, camels, pigs, peacocks, and lots of other animals that I can’t remember.  There was a pit full of alligators (I’m sure I wasn’t the only mother who played through an entire scene in her mind of her children falling into that pit.) and turtles who educated our innocent youth group about turtle mating habits.

 

     

 

In all seriousness, this was an excellent hands-on experience that you couldn’t have at any large state zoo, so check out their website.  http://alohasafarizoonc.com/index.html