On the Run

Planning to leave for our drive down to Florida on Saturday the 20th, we became concerned when the weather reports were predicting huge snow storms in the northeast. By Friday morning we had decided to leave that afternoon instead, trying to get far enough south of the storm to be safe. I spent the morning packing while George finished up at work and by 1pm, in the middle of almost freezing rain, we packed up the kids, the car, and the dog and got on the road. We weren't sure how far we'd make it the first day. The first part of the drive went pretty quickly. It wasn't long before we were in NJ, then Maryland, then heading towards DC. We hit DC traffic around 7pm which was brutal. We kept ourselves entertained by debating whether or not the first lady should reserve a paycheck. My vote: yes. George was getting aggravated with my "bra-burning" attitude and said the first wrong thing they did was give "us" the right to vote. "It's all been down-hill from there" he said. It's was quite the heated discussion (all in good fun, of course) and helped to pass the time while we crept through our nation's capital. I don't remember much of NC but I started driving around 10pm. The kids were sleeping by then and we were getting closer to Myrtle Beach so we decided to just press on to SC. We had a hotel reservation for Saturday night, so we checked in to the same place around 2am with plans to see our friend Frank after some much needed rest. We met Frank for breakfast at a local joint with the saltiest pork products we'd ever had and after hanging out at Frank's house for a while, decided to take the kids to the beach. This was Nate's first time at the ocean, and Olivia's first time since she was a baby. They had a ball! We got so many cute pictures of them playing.

Nate dipping his toes in the Atlantic for the first time.



Olivia dug herself a hole and surrounded it with sticks.


Nate saw how much fun she was having and decided to roll around in the sand too.


Astute observers may have noticed that Nate has on a different outfit than in the first pictures. Well, we were playing in the surf and a 2 inch wave came up, caught Nate off guard, and he fell down and got drenched. What happened next was so cute that I wish I could post the pictures: I took the wet clothes off him and he began to run around naked on the beach. Livy, seeing how much fun he was having, decided she should strip too. She took off her pants and went about her business, naked from the waist down. They played like this for about 15 minutes, until I was able to corral Nate and get him dressed. When we got back to the hotel and started looking through all the naked pictures, I realized that I actually caught Nate peeing in the sand. It was the funniest picture. Frank said he was telling Nate, "write your name in the sand!"

It's a sad thing that a mommy has to think twice about sharing innocent naked baby pictures online. I'm worried that either I'll get charged with child pornography, or even worse, some sicko will find the pictures and get off on them. Anyways, we had a great time on our Myrtle Beach stopover and headed for Florida on Sunday morning.