A Week at the Beach

Over a month ago, we took our annual pre-summer trip to our beach house!  This time, though, instead of having Mimi and Poppy (my parents) tag along, we invited some friends to join us.  Our kid to adult ratio was 1:1.  We had four adults, three active toddlers, and one new baby!  It was loud and chaotic and crazy and silly and stressful but also so, so, SO fun!  We really enjoyed having friends with us and both of my kids LOVED having their buddy Levi to play with.  Next time baby Reed will be able to play with them too!

I have finally gone through and whittled down my pictures, but I still have over 100 to go through!  I think for this update, instead of trying to chronological, I'm just going to group the pictures into categories.  And since it was a beach vacation, might as well start with pictures from the actual beach!

ON THE SANDY BEACH

The beach was so fun this year.  We had perfect weather every time we went down; it was warm, but not too hot and the sun was out but it wasn't blaring bright.  And there was a nice breeze off the water!  I was amazed at how brave Katie Wynn was in the water - especially compared to years past!  As you can see in the pictures below, she would stand out in it all by herself.  Huge improvement from us having to hold her to barely go in the water!  Thomas and I went head-to-head over his hat.  I'd put it on and he'd yank it off, all day long.  He loved filling up his shovel with sand and dumping it on me, my towel, and my beach chair.  It was slightly annoying but it kept him occupied!  Other highlights included finding a crab, catching small fish in the nets, smashing sand castles, and Katie Wynn tee-tee-ing all over Matt.  :)  (He was carrying her out into the water so she could go but she couldn't hold it long enough for them to get to deep waters!)

My kiddos loved crowding Mrs. Laura when Reed was awake so they could watch her.

It's a good thing the kids were willing to pull their weight since we hauled so much stuff down to the beach!

IN THE CRYSTAL CLEAR POOL WATER

The kids were lucky enough to get to swim in THREE different pools - the one at the hotel we stopped at midway, the tiny one at our beach house, and the big community pool just down the street!

Not top?  No problem.  (Someone wanted to be like the boys.)

Cutest picture ever of these two buddies!  Photo credit goes to Mrs. Laura.

Thomas is a pro at vacationing.  

The next Charlie's Angel.

Laura brought squirt guns and since they couldn't be pointed at people, the kids watered the plants with them! :)

AT THE SPLASH PAD AND GRASSY LAWN

One night we rented bike trailers and rode over to the splash pad.  Next to the splash pad is a big grassy lawn that they kids loved running around on.  And the parents loved that they wore themselves out!  

Pretending to be big bikers!

AROUND THE COZY BEACH HOUSE

Some of the most fun was had when we were just hanging around the house.  My kids loved that Levi and his family were there every morning and even all night!  They were sad when we returned home and Levi's family didn't "live" with us anymore.  One of our favorite places to hang out was on the upstairs balcony, but lots of time was also logged on the king-sized bed watching cartoons!

Matching outfits for the win!

When you have an outdoor shower, you might as well use it!

Mrs. Laura had LOTS of helpers for bathing Reed.

Post shower snuggle bunnies!

Levi says, "You can let me play in the sun all day, and you can give me a warm shower, and you can wrap me up tight and lay me on a big comfy bed, but you can't make me nap!"  :)

OUT AND ABOUT IN THE QUAINT LITTLE TOWN

We were brave enough to venture out with all the kiddos a couple of times!  We had donuts early in the morning, seafood at a restaurant, and danced in the town circle to live music.

Drinking the sweet milk from the bowl!

Early breakfast at the hotel before arriving at the beach.

We went to a casual church service - Thomas cried through it - and then to the local Farmer's Market afterwards.  We had a yummy crepe for a morning snack!

On our drive back to reality, we made the obligatory stop at Durbin's for lunch and the best homemade ice cream! 

On the last leg of the trip, when we were all getting a little restless, I glanced back into the backseat to check on the kids and did a double take...Thomas was standing up in his carseat!

Please note that all the buckles are still fastened and yes, his chest clip was pushed up.  We have quite the Houdini on our hands!  

It goes without saying that we are already itching to go back to the beach.  And everyone else's vacation pics are just making the itch stronger!  We had such a good time and can't wait to do it again.  :)

Train Trip Details

In case anyone is interested in setting out on their own train adventure, I thought I'd share the details of what we did here.  

Inspiration for the trip came from this blog post that floated around Facebook last fall.  It's written by a guy named Derek Low about how he traveled across the country for just $213.  I sent the link to Matt one day with a message of, "This could be fun..."  We both agreed that it could be fun and left it at that.  Until a few weeks later we were talking and thought, "We should totally do that!" 

Derek's post has great pictures and gives an excellent description of the trip; you should definitely read it.  I mean, really, I just reread it and there's almost no point in me writing this.  His is much better and he has awesome pictures.  

The difference between our trip and the inspiration one was that we did NOT do it for $213.  I'm not sure that we even did one day for that low.  But our goal was to go on an adventure that we'd always remember, not cross the country as cheaply as possible.

We left bright and early on a Wednesday morning, flying out of the Memphis airport, through Minneapolis, and finally landing in San Francisco.  Our flight got in around 2:00 in the afternoon and we didn't board the train until the next morning, so we had the afternoon and evening to sight see.  Read about that in our Day One post.  

From there, we boarded the California Zephyr, a passenger train that runs Amtrak's second longest route.  It travels between Emeryville, CA and Chicago, IL and we rode it that whole distance.  Between those two stations, it made stops at 33 other stations along the way.  Some stops are very short - ten minutes or less - and others are what they call "fresh air breaks" (but really they're more like "smoke breaks" ya know?) and last 25-30 minutes.  We got off at several of those to stretch our legs and wander around the town we were in.  

The trip from CA to IL takes two and a half days.  Our train pulled out from Emeryville at 9:10am on Thursday morning and we got off in Chicago at 2:50pm on Saturday afternoon.  If you make this trip, make sure you like who you're traveling with!  We booked ourselves a bedroom on the Superliner Sleeping Car which could accommodate two people and gave us our own bathroom.  The room had a couch, table, and chair during the day and converted to a full bed and twin bed top bunk for night.  The sleeper car reservation came with three meals on the train per day.  I was under the impression that we would have wifi on the train but we did not.  We had to completely unplug and enjoy the scenery!

When we got off the train in Chicago, we spent 24 hours there sight-seeing before hoping on the next train - the Lake Shore Limited.  This passenger train is smaller and runs from Chicago, IL to Albany, NY.  In Albany, the train splits and part of it (including all the sleeper cars) goes to New York City while the rest of the train goes to Boston, MA.  Since we weren't headed to NYC, we had to give up our bedroom and switch to coach seats in Albany. The Lake Shore Limited is a single level train and in our experience, was a much bumpier ride!  In reality, it was probably  more like what we expected going in to the trip.  If we'd started with it, we might not have thought anything of it.  Too bad we started with the California Zephyr and its smooth gliding!

We boarded the Lake Shore Limited in the evening for a 9:30pm departure.  It was kinda hard to get on right before bedtime.  The only stop we got off for during this trip was when we switched trains in Albany.  That was around 2:00pm the following afternoon and we arrived in Boston (our final destination) around 8:00pm that evening.  It was just under 24 hours for that ride.

We decided to hang around in Boston for an extra day before flying back to Memphis.  In both Chicago and Boston, we had "sea legs" for a couple of hours after getting off the trains.  And our hotel beds felt heavenly compared to our train beds!

Here is what our 7 day schedule looked like:

Wednesday: Fly out of Memphis early am, land in San Fran in afternoon, night in hotel
Thursday: Board train in early am, train all day and night
Friday: Train all day and night
Saturday: Train all morning and early afternoon, Chicago in afternoon, night in hotel
Sunday: Chicago all day, board train late evening, night on train
Monday: Train all day, off train in late evening, night in hotel
Tuesday: Boston all day, night in hotel
Wednesday: Fly out of Boston super duper early am, home by lunch time, night in our own bed

Overall, it was a really fun adventure for us and we are SO glad we did it!  It definitely is not for everyone, though.  There's lots of sitting still and entertaining yourself.  Surprisingly, we did not read our books as much as we thought we would.  It was just so fun to watch out the window.  Going into the trip, I figured we would leave our room for breakfast, spend the bulk of the day in the sight-seeing car and then return to our room in the late afternoon or evening.  In reality, the two times we went to the sight-seeing car, there were no available seats, but our room was much quieter and had cleaner windows anyway.  We spent all of our time with the exception of some meals in our room.

The food was good.  Not great, but definitely not bad.  In total, we had two breakfasts, two lunches, and one dinner in the dining car.  We bought one lunch from the cafe that was in the lounge car.  We skipped a breakfast and a lunch and were able to eat one dinner out in Denver.  The food is decent but the menu is VERY limited.  Like, only four items for lunch: an entree salad, veggie burger, beef burger, or pork shanks.  I had the beef cheeseburger twice and it wasn't bad, I just really didn't want to have to eat it another day in a row.  

Even though we had a shower in our room, we used the larger shower stall in the downstairs of our car.  It was actually a pretty decent shower - nice water pressure and really hot water!  We had several outlets in our room so I was able to dry my hair (and we could charge our phones).  The toilet and sink in our bedroom were very similar to those in an airplane.

I think that covers all the highlights of train travel and our cross-country adventure!  If there's anything I've left out or if you have questions, leave a comment and I'll respond!

Train Trip: Day Seven

Day seven, our final day of this adventure, was spent in Boston, or beantown, as Matt tells me it's called. 

We had good intentions of spending the day hopping on and off of a city bus tour so we could see as much as possible, but we ended up sleeping way later than we meant to! It was 11:00 before we were ready to start exploring, so we just set out on our own. 

My first picture was of Boston Common where they had apparently drained the water from the lake. I'm not sure if that's common or not. (See what I did there?  Punny.)

We wandered down Newberry Street and windowshopped and saw some old churches. 

Is it just me, or does this church look like maybe it caught on fire one day?  A little ashy up top?

With the exception of brunch in the Hancock Tower, we did not pre-plan anti four meals. For the most part, we walked until we were starving and then just looked around at what was close by and quick. For lunch in Boston, that meant sushi. Not pictured is a whole plate of nigeri. 

Then we had to walk off all that rice we'd just stuffed ourselves with! 

Strolling through a different section of Boston Common.  

Matt and George. (Washington, that is.) 

I think our kiddos would've loved this little line of ducklings!  

I could not believe how friendly this squirrel was with us. I really think if we'd had food of some kind he would have eaten it straight out of our hands! 

In front of the State House.  

Samuel Adams.  

Getting ready to go into the Faneuil Hall so that we could buy our kids some cheesy souvenirs. We left with two lobster claws that they can pinch each other with. Perfect. 

We quietly tiptoed through King's Chapel Cemetary and I reconfirmed my desire to be cremated. 

This new(ish) memorial was behind the Old North Church. It was blank dog tags hanging for the lives lost from Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS. It was really pretty to hear the tags clink together like a big windchime.

For me, the highlight of the day was seeing the Old North Church. I was completely fascinated by the church and its cubicle-like pew stalls. 

Families bought pew stalls to sit in each Sunday. I told Matt that church would be so much easier if Katie Wynn and Thomas could just play on the floor of a little stall!  

Once a family purchased a stall, they could do whatever they wanted with it. Pew benches weren't even included in the purchase. This one had been fancied up by its owner. I can only imagine how much fun Mom and I would have decorating and redecorating our family's stall!  

We were excited to see that our boy Wesley preached in this church twice back in 1736.

Matt demonstrating how to properly use one of the stalls. :) 

And the only non-selfie picture of us on the trip! We learned that they still have services in this church on Sundays so our next trip to Boston will definitely need to fall on a weekend. I'd love to hear the big organ and see all the chandelier candles lit.  

After leaving the church, I was on a mission to get to the harbor. We took a short cut through Copps Hill Burial Ground only to come to a dead end (no pun intended..) and have to go all the way back through it.  

After finding a different route, we finally made it to the "hahrbeh."

My main purpose of going there was so that I could have these side-by-side pictures from our coast to coast adventure. We started at the San Fransisco Bay and ended at the Boston Harbor! 

Enjoying the view (and resting our tired feet) of Boston from the water side.  

We were on the opposite side of the city so we cabbed it back to our hotel.  We knew if we went to our room we'd crash so we had drinks in the hotel bar until leaving for dinner.

I love a festive drink!  That's thyme sticking out of the top of it (assuming you can figure out which one is mine...).

For dinner, we walked to Legal Sea Foods which I gather is a Boston-area chain?  We felt like we had to have seafood while there!

We were glad this guy was able to join us for dinner.

After clam chowder, salad, lobster, broccoli, and rice, we were stuffed silly!  But you know I can't say no to dessert.  I asked our waitress what the smallest dessert was and she suggested the bon bons.  We ordered three - vanilla, chocolate, and coffee.  They were yummy and the perfect size!  (Pictured after we'd taken a test bite of each one.  Coffee was my favorite.)

We went straight back to our room after dinner because we had a super early morning ahead of us.  Of course, since I needed to go to sleep early, I was wide awake.  I watched the hours go by until our 3:00 alarm clock (2:00 our time) went off.  We had to leave our hotel room by 4:00 to catch our 5:30 flight.  It was an early start to the day but we were back at our own house before noon.  

As much as a fun, memorable adventure we had over the 7 days, we were super excited to get home to these two cuties!  How is it possible that they grew up so much in just a week?!  

I'll be back with the details of our trip in the next post!

Train Trip: Day Six

Day six may have been our most boring day of the trip.  Neither of us slept well at all but we slept pretty good from 7 to 10 in the morning! We didn't feel bad sleeping in since we didn't really have anywhere to go anyway.  

We ventured out of our train room for lunch where we dined with a woman in her late sixties that taught plant biology (is that a thing?) in Minnesota. She was headed to New York to visit with her ailing mother. Once again, we had good company and good conversation. We lucked into no bad dining partners on our trip! 

During lunch we rode along side the Mohawk River in New York.  

And also saw farmland. I commented that it looked much more like home, as long as you didn't look at the hills in the distance. 

We eventually crossed over the Mohawk River. 

Around three in the afternoon at the station in Albany, it was time to ditch our sleeper car and switch trains.   The sleeper cars don't go where we were headed so it was coach seats for the last few hours. 

The coach seats are actually really roomy and comfy. They have tons of leg room and recline quite a bit. There's also a leg rest that can come up and a foot rest too.  

Got work to do? Each seat has a table too.  

Massachussets had gotten snow that day and we got to see a bit of it.  

Dam! This train was moving pretty quickly so my pictures are blurry.  

Finally, close to 9pm that night, we got off the train in Boston!  

We had a short can ride to what might be the swankiest hotel room I've stayed in - The W.  

Since we hadn't eaten anything since lunch, we grabbed some pizza from down the street to eat in our room. The slices were huge! And definitely hit the spot.  

Interesting tidbit of the day: The train we boarded in Chicago - the South Shore Limited - was not a two-story train like the California Zephyr we'd been on.  We slept horribly on it because of how bumpy a ride it was. The train jerked and jumped and jostled nonstop! It uses the same tracks and the landscape is actually flatter than what we'd gone through, so my theory is that the bumpiness comes from the one-story train being much lighter than the Zephyr.  Whatever the cause, it definitely was not as smooth a ride. Also, our car attendant looked at me like I was crazy that morning when I asked him, in my striped pajamas, how I could get to the big downstairs shower.  I hadn't really noticed that it was one level when we boarded the night before! Our only shower option was the one in our room that required us to sit on the toilet and with as bumpy as the ride was, that did not sound fun! Not only were we hungry when we made it to Boston, we were very ready for showers too.  

Train Trip: Day Five

Day five was spent in windy, chilly Chicago. We chilled in our hotel room until it was time for us to head to the 11am church service at Chicago Temple (a Methodist church in downtown Chicago). I'm glad Matt pulled it up on his map because I would have walked right past it. It didn't look like a church at all from the outside. It was just the bottom floor of another really tall building. Inside was much more church-like.  

Oddly enough, there was a youth group from Bryant, AR also visiting the church and some of them sat down right beside us in our pew. During the meet and greet, everyone we met just assumed we were there with them.  

The church service was...different...than ours at home. The sermon was done by the Bishop Sally Dycks and it was really good! There was a string ensemble that performed a couple of times - also really good - and all the music was done by the gospel choir. It's our understanding that they aren't normally at the 11am service. They were good and it was fun to watch, but I'm not sure if I'd enjoy it every Sunday. We had a hard time following along with the the hymns.  

After church we went straight to the Hancock Building for our 12:30 brunch reservation. This was both our first time to the Signature Room on the 95tb floor and it did not disappoint! Window seats were available on a first come, first served basis and we lucked into one being available right when we arrived. And it was in the corner so we had windows facing two sides of the city. The views were spectacular!  

We did not go to Navy Pier, but here's a picture of it from up above!  

The food was really good too! It's a set price for brunch so everything is "all you can eat." I could've been satisfied just eating off the appetizer buffet - cheeses and meats, Italian wedding soup, crab legs, shrimp cocktail, smoked salmon, pasta salads, and more. For my entree, I couldn't decide between the waffles or eggs Benedict so my waiter said, "I'll just bring both." Well ok then!

Life is too short to limit yourself to just one dessert, am I right? So I had three - creme brûlée, white and dark chocolate mousse layered cake, and an ice cream sundae. The diet starts next week.  

If anything, this trip is helping us perfect our selfie pictures. There's Lake Michigan behind us.  

After brunch, we visited Adler Planetarium where we got to see the stars and constellations.  

We also saw two shows while we were there. I only fell asleep during one of them. :) 

Here's Matt with the Earth. We traced out our journey on the US - we've traveled pretty far! 

Another selfie with Lake Michigan and the city of Chicago.  

View from the Planetarium.  

We still had a few hours to kill before our night train left so we went to see a movie. Kinda lame, I know, but our feet were tired and it was cold outside! We say Eye In The Sky and then had dinner at a place called Noodles. We didn't have enough time for deep dish pizza. :(  (We had it the last time we were in Chicago so I have experienced before.) 

After picking up our luggage at the hotel, it was back to the train station for us!  

Our room on this train is mostly identical to the last one except it faces the opposite direction so it feels backwards. Just like in the last room, we can sit on the couch and stare at ourselves in the mirror.  

It was after nine when we departed and we hit the sack soon after. So far, this train ride has been MUCH bumpier than the last one. I don't think either of us slept well at all. But we have a full day on the train ahead of us so surely we'll get in a nap or two!