Monday, July 21, 2014

First family of four trip to Chincoteague 2014

We just arrived at the beach house!

First time on the beach!

Hitting the beach for the first time after driving in the car for 5 hours with 2 little ones.

Victory! Isabelle fell asleep on the beach. I love how I can bounce her to sleep in the stroller. Side note-it doesn't always work.  




Our campsite on the beach with sleeping Isabelle. 




The temperature at the beach was great it wasn't too hot to carry her around in the k'tan wrap while we took a walk on the beach. She fell asleep pretty quickly once I put her in the wrap but unfortunately woke up when I tried to lay her down when we got back from our walk. :/


Sophia led us on our walk on the beach and was too tired to walk back so she got to ride on Pat's shoulders.


I wanted a picture of the 3 of us...this is what I got. 
Sophia found this headband in our bag and put it on-yes she is wearing a headband on the beach but if you know her you wouldn't be surprised. 

Pat was tired of taking pictures but I insisted one more picture to remember that Isabelle was only two months old when we went to the beach for the first time with her.

The many faces of Isabelle...


Happy Birthday, Mimi!

Successful walk on the beach = sleeping baby


Another message in the sand for Mimi

We love ice cream!!


Sophia loved the horse that lives next to where we stayed. The first thing she'd ask for in the morning was-"Horse!"
Last night on the beach!

I love how Isabelle watches Sophia...so cute!


She loved playing with daddy!


Sharing ice cream with daddy

Hanging out on the beach the last night we were there.

We had a great time at the beach and I'm so glad we were able to go. 


We were packing up Tuesday night when the power went out because of a thunderstorm. We were hoping to leave early the next morning but our packing was delayed with the power being out. We ordered a roof bag for our CR-V, but it wasn't going to arrive until Wednesday afternoon. Not only that, but the hardware we needed to attach the roof bag to the car wasn't going to arrive at the Honda dealership until Wednesday also. So things were not looking optimisitc for us to leave in the morning like we had planned. I was convinced we'd have to drive two cars to bring everything we needed for our trip. Surprisingly and thankfully our power came back on at 11pm and that morning we started to pack all our gear into one car. I brought everything that needed to be packed into the car outside and Pat packed the car like a game of Tetris. It's pretty amazing the amount of things we got packed in so snugly. A big thanks to my husband! 

We hit the road at 9:15am which was pretty impressive considering all our delays. Then...we hit traffic on 70. The whole road was closed because of a big accident and we had to detour onto some back roads. This delayed us about forty-five minutes, but then we had a pretty smooth drive for a few hours. With only about 30 minutes until we arrived in Chincoteague, Sophia started melting down -- she was done and so was I! 

We finally arrived at the beach at about 3pm. We ate a quick dinner at Woodys and then hit the BEACH!! We only stayed for about an hour before a storm rolled in, thankfully we left before it really started to rain.


The next morning we hit the beach. I tell you things have changed a lot since Pat and I first started dating 10 years ago. Our first beach trip was to Hawaii and then the Outerbanks. Gone are the days when we only brought 2 towels and small beach bag filled with 1 bottle of sunscreen and 2 bottles of water. Check out what we have to bring now:
A tent at the beach is necessary with little ones. Since Isabelle can't wear sunscreen we had to keep her in the shade. A big thank you to our friends the Remmerts for letting us borrow their tent. 



It took us two trips back to the car to pack everything up and about 25 minutes just to leave the beach! Leaving the beach wasn’t fun for anyone especially the little ones because we stayed as long as we could until right before meltdowns! Woo - I have to hand it to parents with multiple children - you amaze me! 

Sophia was not a fan of the waves like she was last year but she really enjoyed playing in the sand. It's amazing how little ones are sand magnets. I totally forgot how much I used to be covered in sand when I went to the beach.  She also made up a game where she would chase Pat's shadow by the water and Pat would lure her into the water that way. 

Here are some great places we enjoyed:

We stayed at Steve's cottages, nothing fancy but it was a 2 bedroom place with a small kitchen and living room which is all we needed. We went out to dinner one night and had the best crabcakes at Etta's. Island Creamery was a daily place to visit to enjoy some delicious homemade ice cream. One day we had lunch at Poseidon's Pantry. Pat picked up lunch here with Sophia while I stayed back with Isabelle, and he came back and said how the store was "so me". The store was stocked with healthy, organic, all natural products. He couldn't believe all the things that were in the store are things that we have in our kitchen at home. 

Until next year, Chincoteague :)

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