Holden Beach

We have returned from our amazingly blessed family vacation to Holden Beach, NC! God truly blessed every detail of this trip...from providing a house, to having BOTH of our families together, to gorgeous weather and happy kids who love the beach...it doesn't get much better than that!! The "vacation" actually started before the beach. I drove to MD with Abigail (and Liz Shea and George Schaaf- which was so, so fun) the Thursday before the beach for my sister Julie's graduation from high school. We had a packed three days. We went to the National Zoo (Liz was thrilled...about as excited as Alathea would have been :), spent time with extended family, hung out at the house, laughed a lot, went to graduation & Julie's big party.

      While all that was going on, Joe had three special days with Alathea all to himself. (Well, he did have to work- and a big thank you to Hil & Reba for watching Alathea for us!). Joe was so excited to have this special time with Alathea and he made the most of it. He took her to her first baseball game. She wore a baseball hat and everything. It sounded really cute!

     Anyways, Joe, Alathea & his family drove to the beach Saturday morning. Abigail & I hopped on a plane Sunday morning, along with my family who drove, arrived at the beach Sunday afternoon. That meant 13 adults and 4 kids packed into one amazing beach house. Here are some pictures and highlights from the week.

 

I love this guy more and more every day. I'm always laughing when I'm with my love.

Here we are with Jon & Heather and there two adorable boys, Andrew & Caleb. Our girls are the almost the exact same ages as their boys. We tried to get an obligatory classic white shirt beach photo! 

 

Here is the whole family on the front steps of the house!

This was the view from our room- not bad! I have never stayed directly on the beach before this trip...it was incredible, especially with two little kids. We could sit on the beach when they were napping and hear them with our baby monitors. Below is a picture of the house and what seemed like our private beach!! Joe's grandma, Mere, bought this tent for the week, which was an absolute blessing. It meant we could sit on the beach all day and never get burned. 

Alathea was soooo happy! She had Ju-Ju, Pop-Pop, Grammy, Ee-oo, Rock-re (just to name a few), essentially all of her favorite people all staying in the same house all week with her. She has this special love for Julie, the best Aunt in the world. Here they are playing on the beach together. We'd all play down at the beach every night together- it was a real highlight for me.

 Below is my fam: Jessica (Rocky's girlfriend), Rocky, Julie & Dad. I love them so much. It meant the world to me that they came!

Joe went fishing daily and must have caught 20 of these baby sand sharks! It made us wonder where the Mama sand sharks were...

Are these two not adorable together??

As you can see, we spent a good part of every day in the pool. Andrew & Alathea especially loved it. To me, the beauty of this vacation was that I only left the beach house once ALL week!  All I did was spend the day at the beach, pool or back porch with my favorite people in the world!!

Cousins...

Oh man, these two were precious. They adore each other!

Sweet Abigail. She was such a trooper. I think every nap she had was either in my sling or on the beach like this one. But then again, that's not so bad after all! 

Here is Mere with her four great-grand children!! 

Something about this little girls smile just melts me!

Abi was with either peeking out of her sling (above) or snuggling someone fast asleep (below)

As you can see, it was a blessed week. God is so good to us. His timing in everything is perfect. I had not realized that this week would be a tough one for my family. June 11th would have been my parents 31st wedding anniversary. And Julie's graduation was a sharp reminder that a huge member of our family was missing. I hadn't considered either of these things when we planned our trip. Being at the beach was a joyful blessing in the midst of a week that could have otherwise been challenging. 

Like I said earlier, my favorite thing about this trip was doing nothing but spending time with my favorite people in the world. I loved sitting on the beach, taking walks with Dad, playing on the beach every evening, watching Alathea have the time of her life, swimming in the pool, rocking on the back porch looking at the ocean and of course, spending a whole week with my boy (that is always a highlight!).