Saturday, July 10th
Alexa really enjoyed waking up and playing with Bella and Jack - particularly this game, Elefun that shoots butterflies out of an elephant's trunk! Eventually, we met up with the rest of the family in downtown Monroe for lunch at Bluemoon Cafe (Dan's fave).
After a mini-shopping trip and a nap, we went to Rox's friend's house to go swimming. To be honest, Alexa wasn't crazy about swimming in the pool. It kinda made us nervous that she was going to be miserable all of vacay.
After dinner Alexa played corn hole with the guys and rode the tricycles.
Sunday, July 11th
For the first time ever, we let Alexa play unsupervised with kids. Bella and her friend Tyler informed me that, "she is being a very good girl." :-)
Alexa really loved this toy...
We attempted the pool again on Sunday after nap, and again Alexa really showed no interest in floating in her raft or playing with pool toys.
Here are the kids playing at Aunt Kathy & Uncle Dave's house after dinner. Dan & me on the back porch.
We really had a wonderful time visiting with our family in North Carolina! It was great to see Alexa interacting/playing with the children so well. It was nice staying up late visiting with John & Rox (although I wish I could have been drinking some wine with 'em!). I'm glad that although we had just seen them all in May, we were able to stop there before heading to our next destination: Myrtle Beach, SC.
Monday, July 12th
The 3-hr journey was great because Auntie & her friend, Sam, rode with us in the van while Alexa rode with Noni & Papa in the truck. The girls watched a movie with the headphones on, so we got a break from Barney!! It was nice for the two of us to listen to music, drive with the sunroof open (without Alexa complaining "sun in eyes"), and have uninterrupted conversation! The only downfall: following my dad. He does not use cruise control (so he randomly speeds up/slows down) and drives through yellow/red lights - I vowed to "lead" when we left MB to go home! We arrived in MB around lunchtime and ate at Bummz, the little place next to our amazing hotel. Alexa ended up napping in my arms at the restaurant and then on the couch in the hotel lobby while we waited for our room to be ready. As soon as nap was over, we headed down to the ocean...
In the photo on the left, taken on our Girls' Vacay to MB in April 2009, Alexa was about 5 months old. The ocean was so cold we could only walk along the beach and put our toes in. This time, she was able to really go in the water. And guess what? SHE LOVED IT!!! She may not like the pool very much, but Alexa is definitely an ocean/beach babe!
For our first dinner in MB, we went to Dick's Last Resort. If you've never been to this restaurant, you should really go sometime. Well, that is if you can handle it being extremely loud and having a rude server. It is totally my kind of place because I love bantering back & forth with the staff ;-) The make everyone hats with funny comments (to see our hats better, you can check out the Snapfish link I'll post at the end with all of our vacation pictures).
Tuesday, July 13th
As soon as Alexa woke up she wanted to see the ocean and kept saying "go down there." But first Noni, Papa, & Mommy decided to take a walk with her to get coffee and buy beach chairs. The end result of this walk was near disastrous... Alexa was stung by a bee for the first time! She cried and made me carry her all the way back to the hotel. She continued to cry in the hotel room and actually didn't stop until we took her down to the ocean. Fortunately, she had no allergic reaction to the sting.
Down at the ocean...
Despite may coats of SPF 50, Daddy still managed to get burned pretty badly.
We headed to Broadway at the Beach in the late afternoon to get on the 2-hr waitlist to eat at Margaritaville. We had a nice time walking around and shopping while we waited. Dinner was a ton of fun, with guys on stilts who made things out of balloons for children and put on shows with various Jimmy Buffet songs! Alexa had a blast singing, "Salt! Salt! Salt!" (she even pumped her fist in the air, lol)
Wednesday, July 14th
In the morning, Mommy & Alexa did some If you're happy and you know it, splash your hands... in the kiddie pool before we headed down to the ocean. The whole week the ocean was quite wavy so Alexa could not actually go into the water without holding an adult's hand. This didn't seem to bother her though. Alexa gladly held hands and "jumped" with any of us. Daddy wore a shirt the entire day to prevent his sunburn from getting worse and spent a good deal of time getting a kite to fly really high! Then Alexa & Auntie practiced flying it!!
Alexa's obsession - the Barney towel.
We had a low key dinner at Bummz, went for ice cream (where Alexa got to ride on this cool horse), and ended the evening with a competitive & fun game of putt putt. For the record, I demolished everyone!!! (Seriously, I won by like 10 strokes I think.)
Thursday, July 15th
Originally, we were supposed to be driving home on this day, but we all made the decision to stay another day :-) This gave us the opportunity to go to Ripley's Aquarium. This activity was well worth the money because Alexa LOVED seeing the fish, sharks, sting rays, lobsters, starfish, turtles, etc.
Since we were already at Broadway at the Beach (where R.A. is located) we decided to have lunch at Senor Frogs. Noni didn't realize that it was Mexican (I don't know how???) and had a hard time selecting a meal without cilantro (b/c she apparently hates it), but she had loads of fun dancing with Alexa and putting her on the creatively decorated bar stools :-)
When we got back from lunch, we had to "downgrade" from our 3-BR suite to a 2-BR (b/c all the bigger ones were already booked for the night). Once we moved and got Alexa down for nap, my sis and I headed to the beach for some sun and bonding time. She was sweet enough to dig a hole for my baby bump :-) When Alexa woke up, we had once last trip to the ocean and the pool (including enjoying happy hour with a virgin Strawberry Dacquiri).
We walked the Strip that evening. Alexa got a butterfly tattoo and had to hold people's hands for 30-minutes while it dried.
We also distracted her from touching it by getting her an ice cream cone ;-) She wanted to walk (instead of ride in the stroller) back to the hotel so we all took turns for awhile. Then as she grew tired, she only wanted Mommy to carry her. If anyone took her from my arms she wailed. So I had to carry her, on top of my big prego belly, forward facing (so as not to smear the still drying butterfly), I don't know how far, back to our hotel. I was exhausted and sweaty when we finally got to the room - thank goodness I had worn tennis shoes!
After getting Alexa to bed and loading up the van, Dan and I went on a mini-stroll down by the ocean (we had down a long stroll on our first night but I was too tired to do it again on our last night).
We left MB around 6:00 am on Friday and were able to follow my parents all the way to Ripley, WV. This was good news for Auntie & Sam because they didn't have to share the backseat of the truck for most of the return trip (I guess they were squished for their drive down to Monroe). We were happy to have Auntie with us because she was so helpful with entertaining Alexa and feeding her, which made the drive much more enjoyable for Daddy and me. The drive home took about 11 - 11 1/2 hours and really wasn't bad. Alexa was great (even when we "returned" Auntie to Noni & Papa) and we got home earlier than we had anticipated.
Here are the full set of photos taken from mine and my mom's cameras - combined in chronological order.
I found this quote and found it to be semi-true: A vacation is like love - anticipated with pleasure, experience with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia. The first part is obviously true, we had been happily awaiting this vacation for months. The second phrase is partially true, as one may have guessed, there were some squabbles between myself, my mother, and my sister that made parts of vacation not-so-fun. And despite that, as the last part of the quote says, I look back on the trip with the fondest of memories! I love my family (both the one I was born into and the one I've created with Dan) and feel so blessed to have spent a week with the most important people in my life. I cannot wait to see where our next family vacation will take us ♥♥♥
Who knows when I'll get the opportunity to post again - we are amidst many "nesting" projects at the moment. Until next time... Ciao.
1 comment:
As always you posted some great pictures and an interesting story. It is nice keeping up with the "happenings in the Ritchey home".
Love, Aunt Janine
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