This vacation business is hard work.

Not just for the parents, but apparently for the kids, too!

Obviously, part of the exhaustion was due to being in the sun and running around like wild maniacs all day...but part of it was due to illness.  Yes, you read right...illness.  Because that's just what this family does!  We plan exciting things, then we all get sick either just before or during said exciting thing.  Lets review the illnesses of the week:

Emmy: cold/sinus problems the week leading up to vacation, fortunately, I was better by the time we left.

Melissa: cold/throat problems a few days before leaving, then had no voice whatsoever on Saturday.

Jake: Strep Throat.  The first time ever that the poor kid has had strep, and of course it's just in time for vacation.  Fortunately, he did come down with it prior to us leaving, so we started him on antibiotics on Thursday, and he was doing much better by the end of the day on Sunday. 

Liam: Ear Infection and major teething.  First ear infection since he had his tubes put in, go figure!  He woke up with it on Saturday, so we had to call the doctor in Pittsburgh, who had to call the drops into a pharmacy in NJ.  That cleared up within a few days.  He has been teething for what seems like an eternity at this point, but when vacation first started I saw 5 brand new white buds in his mouth, and over the week of our trip 3 of those totally cut through.

Ben: Started running a fever at the beginning of the week, had a cough and runny nose.  His lasted the entire time we were there.

Brian: Started feeling sick around Wednesday of our trip, was running a fever, had chills, body aches, cough, runny nose, etc... super fun times.  He felt a bit better by the end of the week, but is actually back to feeling kinda blah now. 

So if you're keeping track, there were 8 of us on this vacation, SIX of the eight were man down at some point.  Brutal.  Dennis came out unscathed, although even baby Parker ran a fever once we were all at home. 

Next year, I'm putting everyone in a quarantine bubble for a few weeks leading up to our trip.

Out & About in Avalon

We spent a looooot of time on the beach during the day, so it was always nice to unwind at night with a stroll, or ice cream...or both. 

Your heart is melting, right?

During our walk on our very first night there, we stopped to admire the fire station just down the street:

Imagine our surprise when all of a sudden, the doors opened up and a firefighter came out and asked if we would like to come inside and sit in a truck!

The kids loved going down to the beach one evening and walking along the water...but Liam didn't get the memo that we weren't actually going to go IN the water.  We took a very drenched little boy back home with us that night.

A visit from Nana & PopPop

It's nice that every year Brian's parents are able to come down and visit us for a day or two while we're on vacation; they love seeing the boys on the beach, we love seeing them and having 2 other adults around to help with the child wrangling--it's a win-win for everyone. 

Nana & Baby Parker!

They spent one day at the beach with us, then came back down to take Jake fishing.

Thanks for coming to visit, Nana & PopPop!

Beach Bums

It was Liam's first time seeing the ocean, and while he's been swimming before, I wasn't sure how he'd react to a much larger expanse of water.  Turns out, I had nothing to worry about; he literally crawled right into the ocean.  I'm pretty sure he would have kept going had I let him.

Video:

He looks worried here, but I often look worried when I realize I don't know what could be lurking underneath me in the ocean, too.

I'd had him in training for the past few months, trying to break his little habit of ingesting fistfuls of sand.  Ick.  I thought if I exposed him to our sand table at home enough, the allure of chowing down on sand would wear off...yeah, not so much.  This was New Jersey sand, time to sample!!  Fortunately, he did stop eating it by the 2nd day.  Which is good, because it literally made me gag to watch him, I don't know how he enjoyed it.

It's a good thing he got over his sand craving and got to work, there was lots of digging to be done throughout the week!

Ben and Jake had a blast together, jumping in the holes they dug, and running into the water:

Good times were had by all!

Back from the beach!

 I'm exhausted, drowning in laundry, and brushing sand off of everything (how does it make its way into everything?), but it is all worth it, we had a wonderful vacation.  I'll do more posts later this week with details, but for now I'll share some pictures of our beautiful family and great friends from our last night on the beach.

And my very favorite picture of the whole entire week: