Watercolor: Day 7 and Home Bound

This will be my last vacation recap :) Saturday was our last day at the beach before we were going to head home on Sunday. I was REALLY hoping for beautiful weather so that we could basically spend the whole day outside at the beach and the pool. It was not meant to be, though. It was rainy and COLD when we got up on Saturday. I mean, it was in the 50's! Putting on bathing suits and going outside was obviously out of the question, and it was really too cool to do anything outside, bathing suits or not. I hadn't packed anything other than shorts and summer stuff for all of us, so we were kind of at a loss as to what to do that day. We decided that we would just go back to the Donut Hole for breakfast. What we didn't take into account was the fact that it was Saturday and the line would be out the door long. We knew standing in a line that long to even be seated would be miserable with the kids, so it was on to Plan B. We had gotten our hearts set on pancakes/breakfast food, so we decided that we would just settle for IHop. I wasn't thrilled because we can eat at IHop anytime at home, but I was ok with it. When we pulled up, the line there was OUT THE DOOR too. I couldn't believe it. So.... onto Plan C! That happened to be driving around aimlessly looking for somewhere to eat. We saw a Cracker Barrel and decided that that would do. Again, not my first choice, but I was starting to get desperate ;) We went inside.... 45 minute wait! No thank you. At this point, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We drove around some more and finally ended up at some little no name Mexican place in a strip mall. I didn't even care at that point. The service was terrible and my food wasn't what I ordered and it was cold..... but we got full. After that, we were more than ready to get back home :) Thankfully, the sun had come out and it had warmed slightly, so there was hope for fun that afternoon.

I went to the pool one last time during rest time. It was so wonderful because it was sunny and peaceful!

When I got back home, the kids were up and kind of in meltdown mode. I noticed that Alaina felt warm, and Aubrey and Jude were just overly tired and falling apart at the drop of a hat. We did put on their bathing suits and make one last trip to the beach. It was more crowded than it had been all week (probably because the weather was the nicest it had been all week), but it was beautiful and we enjoyed our last evening at the beach. When dinner time was approaching, we said farewell to the beach and headed home.

It was bittersweet to say farewell to this view. It's always sad when vacation ends, but I think the fact that we had kind of had a stressful day made it a little easier. We knew getting home to our regular routine and getting the kids in their own beds would be a good thing :) We were just so thankful that we were able to have such an amazing week together at the beach!

When we got home, we ate leftovers for dinner and cleaned out the fridge. We did decide that an ice cream run was in order on our last night :)

We put the kids to bed when we got home, and then David and I started packing everything up and getting the house semi-clean before going to bed.

The next morning, Alaina was up at 6:20 with fever :( We were afraid that the trip home was going to be long. We wanted to get on the road early because we were hoping to get back in town to go to our church that night. We got loaded up and hit the road around 9:30. Goodbye, beach house! You'll be missed!

Silver Laurel Way was the street where we stayed. David saw this picture and wanted to know why I took a picture of a stop sign. Haha!

The trip home was fairly uneventful. It was long, but not as long as the trip there. Thank the Lord! Alaina was kind of miserable since she had fever and she was fussy. She only napped about 20 minutes, which was a bummer. I got in the back with her about an hour from home, and she finally fell asleep about 30 minutes from home. When we finally pulled into our driveway at 5:30, we were SOOO happy to be home! Aubrey, Jude, and I immediately turned around and went to church, and David and Alaina stayed home.

As I've said MANY times, our trip was fantastic. It's such a blessing to be able to go on trips like this as a family. At the end of the day, though, vacation is fun but home is best!