At the end of this week begins our week of vacation – so we have plenty to do to get ready to head to the beach for a week!
Reid continues to smile so bright. It’s just so cute and I love that he is recognizing our voices and faces. He is often quite happy and all smiles after he eats, even when it is 3 in the morning!
Reid has also become a master of getting his arms out of either the swaddle me or when he has been wrapped tightly in a blanket. His go to position is to have his hands up behind his ears.
I know I’ve posted a picture similar to this before, but I just think it is so cute that Griffin still loves to play with his baby toys. And I love the memory it brings to mind of Griffin being so happy and bouncy when playing in this toy in our bathroom while Kevin and I would get ready in the mornings when he was say 7 or 8 months old. 
Griffin is really in to taking pictures lately. While this isn’t a glamorous photo it’s pretty much what every morning looks like around here and I figure it will be good to look back on some day!
Here are several photos this week with Reid and Griffin together. Griffin loves helping and often when he sees me taking a picture of Reid he’ll say “I want in the picture”. It’s getting easier to get a photo with them both looking and I love these pics!
We had decided that this year for vacation we would load the car the night before (a first!) and we would leave on Reid’s schedule. Basically whenever he awoke for his early morning feeding we would feed him and then head down the road. Our best case scenario came true! Reid woke up at 5 and I fed him and then pumped while Kevin fed the dogs, packed up our over night things, and got the last minute things in the car. I went in and got Griffin and we all piled in the car. It seems like that would be pretty quick – but it took us over an hour! We rolled out of our driveway at 6:19 am – yay! We did, however, turn around twice and then stopped at Tim Horton’s for coffee and breakfast treats. In any case, we were happy with our early take off time this year.
Reid was a champion traveler. He slept his typical good morning sleep and ate 4 hours from when we left (so 5 hours from his last feeding, yay!) and we were able to make it to the Tamarack exit for a pit stop. I was starving, though it was only 10:15 in the morning, and Kevin and Griffin got me a tasty salad while I stayed in the car to feed Reid. Altogether we stopped 3 times before arriving at our traditional stop at Sharky’s in Ocean Isle Beach. Reid awoke screaming about 3 minutes from our final destination. It was an ideal travel day to say the least. 
Reid is using his hands and grabbing on to things more (blankets, his bed blanket, shirts, hair, etc). He’s really been watching his hands as he is learning they are his and that he can make them do things! When I enter the room and he hears my voice he regularly turns his head to try to find me. He is definitely tracking people father in the room. I’ve really begun to space out his feedings and sleeping. Several times he has gone 6 hours between feedings at night and he regularly goes 3 1/2 hours during the day with one or two feedings at two hour intervals. This week I also spent time switching out newborn clothes for 3-6 month clothes – what?! He is only 2 months old! But he can fill out a 6 month onesie pretty well 🙂
After we arrived at the hotel in Durham all of the kiddos went swimming in the pool. It was a bit cold until you got moving! I sat out with Reid and watched 🙂
After dinner at Elmo’s Diner we walked to Locopops for yummy popsicle treats. The next morning we all enjoyed breakfast at the hotel before getting on our way to Sharky’s. 
Griffin fell asleep about a half hour away from Ocean Isle Beach – typical!
So. Much. Stuff. Seriously our van was packed with so much stuff! By looking at it you would think we were leaving for a month! Oh, and me wearing my glasses as I developed a stye in my left eye the day before we left for vacation. I also woke up on Thursday morning before we left feeling a scratchy throat. Kevin had been sick the previous couple of days as well and it seems I got something similar. Ugh. The first few days of vacation I wasn’t feeling ideal but fortunately it didn’t last too long. 
After we all settled in to the beach house (and held Reid, lol) we headed down to the ocean! It was SUPER windy and the kiddos were full of energy after having been held up in a car seat for most of the day. It is always fun to see the joy they have in the ocean and also pure anxiety as they are fearless and run around in the rough waves with no fear!
W.I.P.E.D out on his first night. He was in a super deep sleep 🙂
Mom and Dad once again brought containers of fun toys for the kids. The straws and jacks were quite popular. The kids used their imaginations to build helmets, swords, shields, boats, trailers, steering wheels, and so many other things. 
The beach was windy as usual and Reid isn’t a fan of breeze in general so we laid him down in the tent. It was, however, hot and stagnant air in there! So after a bit we took him out and took his swim shirt off and he just hung with us out in the chairs under the umbrellas. He pretty much slept through most of our time at the beach. This year Griffin was all about the sand and digging his hands in it, wanting to throw it like a baseball, sinking his feet into it. Every time I’d look at him he was digging his hands through it. Photo credits to Amy, as she took several of the next images, as I’m sure you can tell when you see them as they are far more artistic than mine!
Here is this years annual beach pajama photo with each of the kids wearing their new pjs. Even Reid got in on the fun when Amy had the idea for them to each lay down on a different step, It turned out awesome!
Until next week!
Aaaaahhhhh, vacation week! Can we go back already?! We look forward to this week all year long. Seems hard to believe that this year is our fifth year heading to Ocean Isle Beach. Five years, what?! Wishing time would slow down.
Grandma found the most awesome toy this year for all of the kiddos – a set of over 700 straws and connectors. Throughout the week the kids (and Grandpa and Grandma and other adults too, lol) made several really cool pieces of art! 
Sometimes being corrected is rough. Finn is really sensitive and often gets teary when he gets corrected or feels he disappointed someone. Kevin and I are realizing we’re being far to “adultish” on him and need to be much better about letting him be a 3 year old and do what 3 year olds do – and not correcting him so much. That’s not what’s happening here, Grandpa was just having a talk with Finn, but I thought it was a good way to capture his expressions. He has really mastered the sassy-lip face, almost making his lips look like the beak of a duck!
Though it is hard to tell, this is Dad and me, heading out pretty far into the ocean. The water was quite warm and nice this year!
This year we found a little, tiny, sand crab! Finn thought it was so cute and wanted to hold it. 
Here “Spidey” is throwing his webs at Grandpa!
This year we took a road trip to Southport, NC, about a 40 minute drive away. It is a cute little town with many shops and restaurants. We took a picnic lunch, and then walked around for a bit and shopped and went to a maritime museum before, you guessed it, meeting everyone to eat again for dinner! Finn has his dinner a bit early at Fishy Fishy!
This is the first year we tried out the surf boards. At low tide it was awesome to teach the kiddos how to ride in the waves. Oh, and they thought it was pretty fun to zoom down the beach on an inch or two of water. They even pulled each other!
We enjoyed an nice date night again this year at the Sugar Shack followed with enjoying the nice evening on the upper deck at the Ocean Isle Fish Company!
This years take home lovie was a shark. Finn fell asleep on the way home from a quick trip to Callahan’s in Calabash. This year he slept in a big boy bed at night and the cot during the day for naps. Not sure why, but that is what he consistently chose each day. I checked on him one night before going to bed and below is what I found! When we were at the store, he wanted to give lovies to each of his cousins too – so the last morning we took the annual jammie photo with each of their lovies.
It was nice weather on our drive home, however, Powell was getting big storms. So we decided to stop in southern Ohio at my old stomping grounds, Ohio University, and have a nice dinner. We had drinks on the patio at Jackie O’s Brewery (which wasn’t there when I was!) and dinner downstairs. Their beers are served throughout Ohio and in Columbus but I’d not had one before being there. I had a raspberry wheat and it was yum! We walked around a bit too, took photos of some familiar places, and had ice cream at a coffee shop that I went to all the time when I was in school. 
Dad and Mom gave us copies of all the photos they took too – there were so many great ones! So I’m including a bunch of them here 🙂 He really captured everyone’s personalities quite well. Some were taken with his waterproof camera from out in the ocean!
