Bay vacation

In the past, we have gone to the beach with either my parents or Chris' parents during the summer. This year, both of our parents had other plans throughout the year and had decided not to do a family vacation. Since Chris and I had no plans for the summer as a family, we talked with some of his siblings and we decided with Erika and Jonathan to plan our own trip. We ended up deciding to vacation on the Chesapeake Bay. The house we rented had a pool, which turned out to be even more of a blessing than we thought because there were lots of jellyfish in the bay on the early side of the week. Plus, the weather was so, so hot that we needed a water escape.

In the beginning of the week, most of Chris' family came down to visit. They stayed for the first couple days and then Jessie ended up finding someone to cover for her at work so she could come back and make more memories with us. She has been gone for the first half of the year in France, so it was really good to have her there and catch up.

Most mornings, I headed down to the beach to kayak with Eleanor, and once with Jane.

We had our own little private beach and Eleanor enjoyed playing with her sand toys in the sand. As long as there was a breeze, it was quite pleasant down there. If there was no breeze it was very, very hot. I believe it was close to or over 100 degrees almost every day that week.

(Eleanor pretending to be a crab)

In the afternoons, we spent most of our time in the pool. The pool was also a bit warm, but definitely refreshing given the extreme heat outside. Eleanor absolutely loved having our own pool in the backyard. She would wake up from naps every afternoon asking if she could go in. One time she forgot she wasn't wearing her "swimmies" though and pushed off the wall to swim and sank straight to the bottom. I was (obviously) watching her since she wasn't wearing any float apparatus and I kind of guessed she might do this so I pulled her right out, but she didn't want to swim much without her swimmies after that.

Eleanor also practiced her diving skills.

EDives from Katie Stratton on Vimeo.

There was an inflatable cooler we found while we were there that we blew up and everyone made attempts to somehow float on it. Needless to say, no one was successful except for Eleanor and Jane.

We had lots of early mornings while we were there. At the beginning of the week it was because all four of us were sharing one room, and at the end of the week, Chris had an ear infection so I was the one getting up with the girls early. I did get to see many beautiful sunrises either out on the upper back deck or out in the backyard while I fed Jane and Eleanor serenaded us. Jane was up so early when we were in the same room that she would typically fall back asleep before breakfast was over. The breakfast pictured below is courtesy of Erika...our crew went through 54 eggs in just 7 days (and probably would have gone through more but we ran out)!

We also got to enjoy a pretty huge thunderstorm part way through the week. We watched the clouds roll in, enjoyed the lightning show, and then headed inside to find out the roof was leaking. The guys tried to put out a tarp upstairs to prevent water coming in, but to no avail. The leak stopped when the rain stopped. 

My dad came to visit toward the end of the week to spend the day swimming with the girls. Eleanor put on a few shows for Shug and Jane demonstrated her new crawling abilities. Jane also learned how to pull up to standing while we were on vacation!

Then Lauren and her fiancee came down for the end of the week. Lauren was brave enough to swim out to the sandbar despite the jellyfish (though there were a lot less toward the end of the week). We played some games, talked some wedding talk, and just enjoyed being on vacation.

It was a great trip, and like all vacations, it went too fast!