(May 13th)

On our first full day of vacation, we decided to explore the beach. We suited up, covered ourselves in half a ton of sunscreen, and made our way down there (along with a plethora of beach pails and shovels)!

Kaya was pretty uncertain of the sand at first (but I still got her to wave at me)!

Before we left for our trip, I painted her toenails for the first time ever. Every time she’d remember about them, she’d get so excited, point at them and smile. Before long, she was ready to explore. There were some relatively large tidal pools on the beach that day, and once Kaya discovered them, she was determined to run through them almost all morning. (This is a happy face!) This series of pictures might be my favorite. She finally came down to the ocean to play, but when a wave of cool water came in, she wasn’t too happy. Another wave actually toppled her over (don’t worry, we were right there to pull her up), and after that, she didn’t want to play in the waves anymore. We made sand castles… which really means that we were building castles just for Kaya to demolish. After about an hour and half on the beach, we headed inside for lunch and a nap. We were hoping that Kaya would get some good rest before our scheduled Dolphin Tour that afternoon, but she only slept for about thirty minutes or so.When I planned our trip, going on a Dolphin Tour was at the top of my activities list. I was so excited to take a long boat ride and hopefully see some dolphins!

Sadly, at this time of year, you have about a 50% chance of actually sighting any dolphins. The boat crew said they had seen quite a lot earlier that morning, but we were out of luck in the afternoon. They let down the fishing nets in an attempt to lure the dolphins near us, but still, nothing.

We did see a pair of stingrays, though!Despite the missing dolphins, we still had a lot of fun on the boat. Our ride was about 2.5 hours long, and Kaya was a trooper through the whole thing. She had a blast just peeking out of the cabin and “surprising” me.
Waving from the second level!We headed back to the condo and cooked tacos for dinner, which turned out to be the perfect plan after a long day outside (I don’t think Kaya could have stayed happy through a meal out)! There’s nothing like ending the day with daddy cuddles and cartoons 🙂

If you missed day one of our trip, you can find it here:

myrtle beach 2014, day 1: traveling, our condo, and greek food

(May 12th)

I threw around hints about going to the beach for weeks. I looked at a million different places we could stay, and even “trained” Kaya to nod her head when I asked her if she wanted to go to Myrtle Beach.

But I never even booked the reservation. For multiple nights in a row, I’d get it all loaded up on the computer, and just stare at the “submit” button. I was just a little nervous to commit to anything, especially being 32-33 weeks pregnant at the time of our anticipated trip.

Lucky for me, Michael is a little less afraid of commitment and made that final click. We were officially going to the beach!

A month and a half later, we loaded up the car, dropped off Jax at the vet, and began the 5.5-hour-long drive.

It seemed like we had been counting down to this day for forever.

With a 19-month old and an 8-months-pregnant lady in the car, we definitely expected to stop along the way. To our surprise, we didn’t have to! We had our lunches packed, sang the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” about a million times, and looked at some new books to stay entertained. She did take a 30-minute nap, but that was all.
We rented a privately-owned condo for the week. We were so impressed with how spotless it was!Kaya actually ended up taking one of the beds for herself (the pack-and-play isn’t a favorite anymore, apparently), so it worked out really well that there were two.
There was a living room (with a sleeper sofa), and our own balcony. One of the main reasons I chose this place was the fact that it had a full kitchen. It was great to have a place to prepare and store breakfasts and lunches. We even cooked tacos one night! We could see the ocean from our balcony, just off to the left! It was probably a two-minute walk to the beach, and we didn’t even have to cross the street 🙂The view off the balcony to the right:
We headed down to the boardwalk with hopes of finding Greek food for dinner. Our vacation coincided with “Bike Week”, and Kaya wasn’t too sure about all the loud motorcycles at first (which is why she looks so uncertain in this picture). We did find some amazing gyros- probably the best I’ve ever had in the States (and that’s saying something, because I’m picky about my Greek food)! They were made with real lamb- so authentic! Kaya probably ate half of mine on her own!