Getting There

We have been waiting a whole year since our last beach trip! We always have so much fun and really look forward to each year with Justin's family.  We rent a house and then lounge for a week by the ocean.  

This year though with airplane tickets being so ridiculous, we decided to drive. Our trip was going to be 18+ hours in the car.  I was excited and terrified at the same time.  Haylie does ok with long rides, Jace however, does not.  And there really are not a lot of options for him for travel toys since he is at that awkward stage - all he wants to do is throw stuff.  Anyway, I got some things together for both kids - one of which I made this travel book for Haylie.  I thought she would love following our trip with a map, and some page-protected pages with dry erase crayons.  It went over okay - she liked it but mostly just scribbled circles on the pages.  Whatever makes her happy!!

Since we were travelling so far, we rented a mini-van so we didn't put all those miles on ours.  It was worth EVERY PENNY.  It was a smoother ride, it had a DVD player (utilized most of the time!) and had lots of plug ins and storage for our cross-country trip.  We fell in love with this car and were a little sad to return it!

We had good moments and rough moments.  Going there, Jace cried hysterically about every 2 hours.  He was so sad to be strapped in his car seat and nothing seemed to help except to get it out of his system.  We stopped a few times to stretch - our last fill up was 1:45 AM in Birmingham, AL...needless to say it was not a great area.  After that, both kids fell asleep until about 7 or so - and the moment Jace woke up, he realized he was still in that dang carseat and let us know his thoughts about it.

After a breakfast stop, I finished up the driving and got us to "the edge" as Haylie calls it.

First sights over the causeway.  Welcome to Ocean Isle, NC.

Let the week begin!!