Our First Day at the beach!

My mom came to town this past week, so we decided to take a trip to the beach. We went to North Myrtle Beach, SC which is about 5 hours from our house. Originally we had planned on my Dad and Craig to be able to come, but as it turns out it was just my mom, Peyton and myself. Craig has been super busy with his new company and couldn't take the time off. My Dad didn't have enough vacation saved up so neither of them could come. Also as it turned out my dad found out he had a detached retina in his eye and had to have emergency surgery right before he was going to come out here, so he wouldn't have been able to come anyways. He had to spend the next 10 day laying on his right side (He could take 15 minute breaks every 45 minutes to do whatever he needed to do), so that a little bubble in his eye wouldn't pop. Not fun, so a trip to North Carolina was definetely out of the question. Anyways, so the next posts are all about my mom's trip to see us and our trip to Myrtle. I was really sad that Craig and my Dad couldn't make it. It was a lot of fun.

We were on the 14th floor and had this awesome balcony overlooking the ocean. Peyton was so funny. All he could say when he saw the ocean was WOW! So that is what we nicknamed the ocean.

Here is my mom by "the WOW"

It was a little scary so high up for us, because Peyton wanted to look out at the ocean so much.

Here Peyton is with his Grandma. He cried when she left. I think it was like having 2 moms!

Beach Pictures

Here is the hotel we stayed at. We had a 1 room condo that would have slept 6 people. It was super nice. Oh, and it only cost $50.00 a night. Yeah for off season rates!

The last time we went to the beach Peyton didn't want even near the water. This time, it was hard to keep him out of the water. He loved it. That is why I really wished his Daddy had been able to come this time. Craig really wanted to take Peyton to the ocean to play in the waves. I think they just scared him too much. The water temperature was still in the the low 80s just like when we went in June, plus it was still just as windy. I guess a few more months under his belt really helped him to be brave.

I am so brave huh! Posting this awful picture of me, but I don't care. I had a fun time with Peyton at the beach, and I have to show that I was there too!

Peyton loved the water, but had a hard time keeping his balance when the waves would wash away the sand under his feet. It was cute to watch him try to figure it out.

The beach had a ton of shells and Peyton really enjoyed digging for them and also using the bigger pieces to dig with.

Another of Peyton's favorite things to at the beach is chase the seagulls. I think he wanted to pet them.

Big Tractors!

They were doing some work on the beach, but they parked their huge bob cat and front loader by our hotel. Peyton loved being that close to the "tractors".

Grandma found Peyton a huge dragonfly to look at. You can barely see it straight across from Peyton's head on the rusty part of the machine.

Peyton was really excited about this adventure.

And he really enjoyed having his Grandma all to himself.

Peyton played in this scoop many times while we were at the beach.

This really was our only day at the beach. It was super windy this first day and we kept getting sandblasted. The second day it was still windy and the temperature was really cool, but by the 3rd and 4th day, it had turned into a tropical storm and the wind was gusting at 35-40 mph, with lots of rain. Peyton learned the words, windy and raining on our trip. Oh well, we had a nice time being at the beach and we got to go shopping at the mall and outlet mall. Fun for me and my mom anyways!

Ripley's Aquarium

Since we were really tired of the wind sandblasting us at the beach, we decided to go to the aquarium in Myrtle Beach. It was really neat, and Peyton really enjoyed it. Here is a collage of our day there. We especially liked the shark tank. It had a tunnel through it and a moving walkway that you just rode on. The sharks would be swimming right over us. It did remind me of the movie Jaws though!





This saw fish was really neat. It was resting on the top of the tunnel. It almost looked human with its wide mouth and what looked like eyes (which at first I thought they were until it swam away and we saw them on the top of his head)

We went through the tunnel 3 times and 2 out of the 3 times this guy was here.


Me (already wearing maternity clothes...dang it)

Peyton and me in the puffer fish tank.

Peyton escaped from his stroller. He needed to stretch his legs. This picture cracked me up. It looks like the scuba guy is patting him on the head!

A little more beach, and a lot of Lazy River...

After the aquarium, we decided to head down to the beach again. The waves were really big now, and the water was really foamy. There was also hardly any soft beach left because of the high tide, so we hardly spent any time down here. Peyton actually didn't even want in the water because of all the foam.

Look how foamy the water is.

My mom in her cute sun dress.

We headed to the nice indoor, warm lazy river. The hotel had an indoor lazy river and one outside. They also had 3 toddler pools, which we played in a little bit on the first day we were here, while it was warmer, but now that it was only about 68 degrees and very windy, the inside pool was very nice.

We went around and around and around...every night!