Nelli Beach, Sunday

We were able to get settled into our house and enjoyed a leisurely morning.  Emily took this picture before we headed off to 11am mass.  The ocean was very calm.

We arrived early to church and were asked to bring up the gifts during mass.  What an honor!

After lunch the kids were all super excited to hit the beach.  Isaac really enjoyed playing in the sand.  He tried eating the sand last night but seemed to have figured out it doesn't taste very well and did not sample it again.

There is always a cousin around to play.

Anthony asked me where David was as soon as he got down on the beach.

We had a low-key games night at our house.  No pics of that.  I'm just getting warmed up.  More tomorrow.

Nelli Beach Week!

It took us most of the day, but we made it!  Kids very excited to see their cousins and hit the beach for a quick swim.  I didn't have my phone for Isaac pictures, but will report that he was nervous about the beach for about 2 minutes.  He tried eating sand and found it isn't very tasty but learned it is a lot of fun to play in!  I'll get some photos tomorrow!

Museum of York County, The Dixie Pig

Technically, we had ice cream for lunch at The Peach Tree... But around 2:00 we were hungry for BBQ so we consulted Yelp for a nearby place and found a winner, The Dixie Pig.  My pulled pork sandwich was fantastic and we were happy they had bratwurst for Emily and catfish for David.  David is interested in trying all sorts of foods these days.  He doesn't  always like what he picks, but I'm glad that he is giving new things a try.    For instance, he ordered sweet tea and braised cabbage with his catfish at lunch.  And no, he didn't care for either, but he tried!

After lunch, we went to the Museum of York County.  We found it a few years ago when we were visiting Pop Pop.  We were able to watch the planetarium show  and then the kids had some time to explore the best hands-on room full of preserved animals, fossils, insects, and you name it stuff I have ever seen.  There was also an expert on hand to answer their hundreds of questions, get this:  enthusiastically!  (Too good to be true!)

Drawer after drawer of things to explore.

Nothing like comparing your height yo that of a baby giraffe.

Emily's got an elephant tusk and Lia has one of those whale parts that filters the krill from the water... She knows what it is called.  I'll update when I ask her later.  ;-)

Peach Picking (or not peach picking)

Our plan was to pick peaches for beach week today.  We love The Peach Tree because there is an ice cream bar to reward all your hard work.  That said, we were disappointed to hear there were not enough peaches to pick our own due to the loss of many crops during a late frost.

There were peaches a plenty to purchase in the store so we got off easy in terms of physical labor... And Chris let us have ice cream even though we didn't pick off the trees.

We enjoyed tasting the different varieties and decided the Fire Prince variety were the sweetest.  The watermelon was off he charts delicious as well.

Yes, it was good to be a Nelli today.

Trunk full of peaches!  We're going to make a lot of peach lovers very happy!  Chris says we keep 3 boxes for our house.  :-)

"Do I like peaches, Mommy?"

Carowinds 2015

It was just our little family at Carowinds this year... No cousins could join us but we didn't let it get us down.  As you can see, we were pumped for a fun day of conquering some roller coasters!

The first thing we do, once in the gates, is to get measured and get an arm band based on your height.  The taller you get, the more rides you can ride.  This was Lia's first year in the red 48" category.  And David got 54" for the first time this year, which means he could ride all the rides in the park!  

So our game plan was for Chris, Lia and Isaac to visit the "kiddie" rides while I took the big kids to conquer the biggest and baddest rides in the park.

We didn't waste any time and took David to the Intimidator first thing.  This was the newest and scariest ride till Fury arrived this year.  It has a very steep drop at the very beginning.  He was excited but a little nervous.  I had the joy of sitting by him and got to hear the:  "This is so awesome!" mantra through the entire ride.  In fact, he said it was the most awesomest, awesome experience of his life!  (All 9 years of it)

I am a little bummed that *I* didn't get to take sweet Isaac on the carousel but it looks like he enjoyed his special time with Daddy!

Isaac's chubby little pointer finger got quite a workout today as he pointed out all the roller coasters and told us to "Look!"  He also noticed people on rides waving, so he started waving back.  So incredibly cute!

Lia and I got pedicures the day before our trip so after lunch, when we stopped at the water park, we took a moment to admire them.  I thoroughly enjoyed my pedicure, by the way.  It was Chris's Christmas gift to me.  Lia did not enjoy it too much.  The massage chair tickled her, the water was too hot and according to her, it took too long.  I, on the other hand, could have sat in that massage chair for like 3 more days!

This guy had the right idea, so I shamelessly napped right beside him while the big kids enjoyed the water slides.

Lia enjoyed bumper cars with her Daddy!

And last, Emily and I braved the new 'Giga Coaster', Fury 325.  It was pretty incredible with a 81 degree drop from 325 feet and top speeds of 95 mph!  She rode it solo a second time and I got a picture of her waving at the end.  She's in the 3rd car (waving) from the left.  Adrenaline.  Yes.

Fury 325 images:

(Yes, we did this!)

Cici's Pizza wrapped up our incredibly fun day.  We clocked over 9 hours at the park!  Time for bed.

Let the Vacation Begin!

It's travel day for us.  It is not easy getting 6 people across the country but we managed to do it once again.  Here we are at the airport waiting for Chris to park the car.  The kids have really taken to card games and I love that they are playing do nicely with something that is not an electronic device!  (Says this Mama who is snapping photos with her iPhone and texting her husband, answering email, blogging...).

We got all our stuff in 2 big suitcases.  Chris and I shared one.  David, Lia and Isaac shared the other.  Emily packed her own bag which I did not check this year... (Hope it works out). And everyone brought a small carry on.  We had Isaac's big car seat and Lia's small booster but all in all not obnoxious at all!

We ate breakfast at the airport and were delayed an hour b/c United's computer systems went down (crazy).  By the time we got on the plane it was almost noon and Isaac was done.  He slept most of the 2hr 15 min flight and I got cuddle time.

More waiting for our rental.  We got a 2015 a Town and Country.  It is just like our minivan at home except black.  We were thrilled b/c it has a DVD player and Bluetooth so we could sync up our phones.  (Sweet.)

We regularly get the big round family table now when we go to Crackerbarrel.  The kids now call it our table!

And they really liked that peg game.  David "won" severely times by figuring out how to only leave 1 peg.  He proudly called himself, "Genius."  Smart kid, that one.

Tomorrow is Carowinds!

Happy 4th of July!

We took the family to the symphony for our annual 4th of July celebrations.  Our kids get so excited for these events so it was a great opportunity to take some family pictures!  Here is my big, flag-waving patriotic boy, in his very own chair.  Isaac is saying "Look!" and pointing at everything these days.

Emily is rapidly approaching my height.  She wants to pass me up so badly!  Chris made a bee-line to the concessions  as soon as we arrived.  I just noticed him in this picture, happily making his way back with a beer.  This is how we differ... My first priority was pictures!

Best family pic we could get.  Chris told David to be silly since he tells us he doesn't know how to smile.  Lia has her "posed" smile.  Emily and I look good and Isaac is actually looking at the camera so we'll keep it!

We thought the cannons would frighten Isaac during Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture but he took it all in stride.  Cannons?  No big deal.

Emily wore this dress when she was little so it is really fun to see Lia in it now.  She's got the good smile in this photo so I just cropped everyone else out!