Of course, both kids had come down with bad colds the day before, and Alice was especially droopy. Here I am feeding her applesauce laced with ibuprofin while she watches Daniel Tiger, a combination that finally managed to bring an end to her crying every two minutes.
By 11:30 we were finally on the road. Alice fell asleep almost immediately, and Simon was soon dozing, when Zac realized he needed a rest stop (because our other travel curse, in addition to the kids being sick, is that something is often wrong with Zac as well). When we pulled into a gas station, Simon came to, and started announcing, "Here we are! We're at the beach!" over and over again, causing Alice to wake up. So much for the nap.
Although the drive to the beach is only two and half hours long, we had to stop at another rest area. This one at least provided plenty of entertainment for the kids, as the trees had cicada shells on them. Alice gathered five in a baggie and brought them into the van with her. Both kids also dug in the dirt under the tree, "planting seeds" and got all muddy. It was great.
Simon eventually took a real nap, but Alice never did. Around 2:30pm , we finally arrived at the beach!
Our plan was to meet Grayson's family at the Carolina Beach boardwalk, and get donuts from the famous Britt's donut shop for the afternoon snack. This was a perfect plan.
Energized by the donuts and happy to be freed from their car seats, the kids ran around and went bonkers for quite some time.
After stopping at Food Lion for groceries and going to the rental office to pick up the keys, we finally headed down to Kure Beach and arrived at our beach front condo. The view was great!
We settled in a bit, had a quick supper of lasagna (that we'd made in advance) and headed down to the beach. I didn't bring my phone, so that part is completely undocumented. But it was a beautiful evening. The waves were really calm, so we were able to coax Alice and Simon into the water up to their knees, but that was all. They were both pretty wary of the waves. Grayson was much braver, or more ignorant of his mortality, and frolicked in the waves.
Around sunset, we headed back in, took baths, then had watermelon for a bedtime snack. The kids probably should have had another bath after that, but oh well.
The kids were supposed to all sleep in one room, but Grayson was the weak link and kept coming out of their room. Eventually, one of his parents just took him to their room until he fell asleep then transferred him back to the kids' room. All the kids woke up a couple of times that night for various reasons, so it was a bit of a rough start to the weekend.
