Virginia Beach -- the beginning

Every year we get together with my family for an epic summer vacation. We rotate between two of my favorite places in the entire world: a beach house at Sandbridge Beach, Virginia and my Grandma's house in Blackfoot Idaho. Last year was our trip to Heaven on Earth, so this year was the next best place -- THE BEACH!!!

In all my brilliant planning, I wanted to get to Virginia as early in the day as possible. Between layovers and a 3 hour time difference, most flights put you in pretty late at night. When all was said and done we found a flight that got there at 2:30. Yippee! It also left AZ at 6 am. Boo! What was I thinking?

So at 4am, we hauled out of bed and loaded up the kids. We were all moving pretty slowly so we didn't even get out of here until after 4:30. By the time we got to the airport, parked, caught the bus and got checked in (where our luggage was all tagged with the dreaded neon LATE CHECK-IN tag), passed security, we literally walked straight onto the plane. We may have cut it a little close and all the kids had to pee and were starving, but they did great on the flight anyway.

Ellie took Luke up and down the moving sidewalk as entertainment in the Chicago airport. And yes, we did leash him and he loved it.

We spent the first few days with our old neighbors, the Tylers. They moved to Virginia Beach 2 years ago and we love to see them whenever we can.

Sadie, Sadie, Brody, Ellie, Nate & Ronan

We played games, went to the park, swam, went on walks, caught fireflies (and Dustin caught a frog). . . just generally hung out. One night we got a babysitter and went to dinner on the boardwalk and stayed up late playing games. Jill also gave the girls haircuts and Sadie had a few crashes on the scooter. This led to a scab right over her lip that looked like a Charlie Chaplin mustache all week.

She also tore open her toe a few times and has 4 scabs on her knees. She put it best when she said, "I am not having very good luck with scooters today."

Saturday it was time to say good bye and meet up with most of the crew for lunch. We were going to try out some hot dog joint but my kids informed me they would *not* eat hot dogs. We opted for Kelly's Tavern instead where my kids ALL ordered corn dog bites. Fire probably shot out of my eyes at that moment. Luckily we had our own room, but that was one wild lunch!

Allie, Matt, Nate, Zach, Luke, Ellie & Sadie down in front

After lunch my dad and my brother took the big kids and headed for the beach house, while we ended up with blondes in the back and headed to Costco.Costco was an adventure and everyone kept commenting on how cute my twins were. They were pretty adorable singing and hugging each other. Sadie is so lucky to have her very own built in cousin/best friend.

When all was said and done we spent $460. This is what $460 gets you at Costco:
And this is what you car looks like when you pack it all in:
And with that we were off for a week at the beach!!