Trip Wrap Up

Beach House
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

We all had a fabulous time in Myrtle Beach. It was a week's worth of good food, swimming in the pool, playing at the beach, golf for the fellas and not quite enough sleep for any of the kids!

This is a photo of the house that we stayed in (from the back). On the last day, Megan really didn't want to go home. I told her that we had to leave because another family was going to be using the house. She said, "Well, we can just ask them 'what are your names' and then we can stay here with them". Hmmm, if only that would work!

On one of the overcast days, we visited the botanic gardens. They had a ton of beautiful sculpures and a low-country zoo. Jake was especially fond of the alligators....or as he says "chomps".



Megan definitely had the most fun swimming in the pool. She spent as much time as she could in that water.



On the way to the airport, we stopped to have lunch with my friend Tara in Charleston. Although it was a short visit, it was really nice to see her. Jake didn't have much of an opportunity to nap, so he was quite a handful on the plane. He was back and forth between me and Darin. He wanted to watch Pee Wee on the DVD player, he wanted to open and close the DVD player. He was super restless. Jimmy picked us up from the airport and as we were driving out of O'Hare, we said, "Hey Jake, look at the plane" (it was really close to the road). And he said, "Yuck, plane". I felt exactly the same.

Organized Chaos

Organized Chaos
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

We're in sunny Myrtle Beach on our annual family vacation and this was the best family photo we could get today! The kids are having a blast swimming in the pool and playing at the beach. As a matter of fact, Megan went to get dressed this morning and unbeknownst to me, got her swimsuit on and headed for the pool before I even made it downstairs. She was in the water by 8:30 this morning. We're keeping our fingers crossed for good weather for the rest of the week!

Showtime

The show must go on.....
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

This is Megan with her friends, Katie and Francesca. They always talk about putting on a show. Usually, they stand around and try to decide what they're going to do. This time, they actually performed a bit with a little dance.

Oh Boy.

Dennis?
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

So, I'm thinking that Jake should've possibly been named Dennis......as in "The Menace". He's been a handful lately. A couple of weeks ago, when we went to the beach, he threw his shoe out the window somewhere on Foster Ave. Unfortunately, I didn't notice it until we were at the beach and he only had one shoe. He confirmed my theory of 'window throwing' when we were driving down Willow (which is super busy). Megan was wearing my sunglasses, which is fine because she takes care of things, and she took them off for a moment to scratch her face. Jake grabbed the glasses and tossed them out the window. Ugh. I had to pull over, back up and run down the street to grab them. All the while, I'm watching huge trucks come within inches of crushing them. Now, I had the windows open because my air conditioner went out - unfortunately it was in the 90's that day. I was not a happy camper. Then, the next morning I was taking them to Debbie's and since I still didn't have A/C, the windows were open again. Driving down Elston, Jake grabbed Megan's Princess cup out of her hand and threw it out the window. Again, I find myself running down the street to grab something out of the road. Needless to say, Jake has lost all window priveleges. Fortunately for him, the A/C got fixed later that day.