The Big Summer Vacation, part 1

During dental school summers are only 2 weeks long. A long while before these two weeks arrived we had already planned our whole vacation (maybe we were looking forward to it just a little?). The 1st week was spent having lots of fun with the Karlson family at a resort in Myrtle Beach. Even the drive down was an adventure of sorts. We spent 10 hrs traveling from home to Aaron's in VA. The next day we caravaned down to Myrtle, spending another 10 hrs travelings. We saw some beautiful things like these clouds and this marsh (it reminds me of The Notebook when they canoe amongst all the swans).
We saw the quaint back-roads of SC. Our GPS took us past corn field after corn field down Chicken Rd of all things.
Did you know that True Value Hardware has a Bridal Registry? Me neither, but apparently it does. The handy man's dream come true.
Khloe of course was an angel.

Once we arrived it was sweet relief because no matter how chill your baby is, 20 hrs traveling in two days is a lot! The most exciting thing for the guys was golfing. And of course, for us girls was our night out shopping. We pulled out all the stops and stayed out till midnight. We came back with lots of goodies in all our bags but perhaps the most hilarious part of the night was when I unknowingly drove, off-roading, right through the median. We spent quite a bit of time hanging out at the resort.

Check out this candy store. Gummy bears the size of my hand and a jelly bean sand castle made with 254,093 beans. For a mere $25,000 you could have this very castle in your own home.


Here we are at the bouncy house arena. There were like 7 different bounce houses. Notice we're all clustered in the shade of one of these. Yes it's humid, we all know that about the south, but what I still don't know is why I even bothered to do my hair or put any make-up on when my hair was a frizzy mess in a pony tail 30 min after leaving the resort and my make-up was sticky and sweated off not much later. Farthest on the right is Ariel. She was a surprise visitor on this trip. Vendla brought to help with all the kids... our very own nanny!! She was great with the kids, watched them all while we adults went out together one night, and she was fun to party with.

Myrtle Beach seemed home to every sort of attraction from shopping to mini golf to amusement park, which is where we found ourselves on the last night together.

And what trip to Myrtle Beach would be complete without loads of beach time?!

Playing Catch-up aka The World's Longest Post

Ah, the glorious days of summer! They speed by so fast! We're proud of ourselves for all that we've squeezed in this summer. Unfortunately a lot of it was long ago and I still have yet to mention it on our blog. Uh, heh. :)

We spent an afternoon at Wards Berry Farm petting the farm animals (Khloe laughed hysterically at each one), indulging in a delicious smoothie (if you can call banana with choc a smoothie, lol), and scouring the field for some delicious strawberries.

I hope everyone can still love and respect me after I admit that this summer I baked bread for the very first time. Thanks to Mel for some seriously amazing recipes which is where I got the recipe and of course, Mom, who I called at least half a dozen times. See how very lovely they turned out? I was quite pleased with my efforts (hence the enormous grin). I figured it was a momentous occasion, worthy of a photograph. Lol.

We celebrated Independence Day on Saturday with our good friends. We had quite the spread, not the least of which was juicy watermelon (Khloe's fav). We made some toss-around homemade ice cream and played around in the Keyes' backyard. Oh the joy of a big backyard! On Sunday we looked festive at church and hosted more friends at our house for a BBQ...

We spent a day in Boston checking out another section of the Freedom Trail. While we have frequented Boston's North End we have not stopped at the historic sites there so that's where we headed. We were excited to come across these Colonial musicians. Khloe clapped along. We went thru the Paul Revere Mall to Old North Church. Most interesting to me were the separate cubical-like pews that each family had. Wes and I thought that seemed nice for corralling and controlling the kids :) (you can tell we have a 1 year old!).

One fabulous thing about Boston is how many free activities there are. In the summer they have "Free Fridays" where different locations around the Boston vicinity host a free day. Wes also had Fridays off when he was doing his APEX internship so we loaded Sophie, Piper and Khloe in the car and drove them to the Franklin Park Zoo. It was SO HOT. We had a lot of fun, all the girls like animals, but by the time we made it back to the car everyone's cheeks were red and we were all dripping sweat. That definitely called for some water-table time. (Poor Kristen couldn't join the fun because she was home nursing her nose back to health)