Vacation vs Staying at Home!

One of the traditions for our family since the first summer that Matt and I met is a week long trip to Myrtle Beach SC.  This year with the changes in our financial situation and our desire to renovate to make the house more useable, the annual trip was given up. I am probably the most upset about this than anyone, but I am trying to make my week of vacation as fun and productive as possible.

One of the great part of our vacation is I build a stockpile of junk food and sodas for the kids to consume. I decided to allow a moderation of junk food at home this week. So far the kids have enjoyed donuts for breakfast for 2 of the 3 mornings as well as candy 3x daily for the last couple of days. A bag of Cool Ranch Doritos has also been consumed in less than 3 hours. I would say that so far this area is pretty equal for vacation vs staying at home.

Besides spending time at the ocean every day, the kids usually like to spend several hours at day at the pool. Sunday, we celebrate Kendall and Zach's joint Birthday Party at the pool. Monday, Zach, Kendall and I spent a couple of hours for swim lessons, currently the plan is for all of us to go to the pool today (Wednesday). My plan is to spend all afternoons at the pool on Friday, Saturday and maybe even Sunday. The will definitely get us more pool time then we would normally have at the Beach. Now if I could just get my feet in the ocean even for 1 day, life would be perfect!

Shopping is a major event during our normal vacation. We are definitely keeping this up while staying at home. On Tuesday, we spent the afternoon at IKEA. It was lots of fun and we were able to get most of the furniture to make our moves complete! Matt and I shopped at Harris Teeter this morning for the Super Doubles event and I plan to hit CVS today as well. I will be taking Haley and Lily school shopping on Thursday so I think the shopping is definitely the same.

The final reason, I look forward to vacation especially in the last several years, is spending additional time with the kids. I can honestly say that by staying at home this year, has given me more stress free time with the kids. No set schedule definitely reduces the stress on a person!

So in conclusion, I wish we could even go to the beach for a couple of days but since that is not possible, we are making the best of staying home together as as family this year!
Hopefully new pictures and more post will appear the second half of my vacation week than the first!