Beach Trip 2016

Well, we took a beach trip. Please notice that I said "trip" and not "vacation", because it was a few relaxing moments in the midst of overwhelming crazyness.  If Gran and Pawpaw hadn't had the idea for us all to rent a house together, Brian and I would have never attempted the trip with Andrew at this age  But at least we got a few good photos as a consolation prize. 

Things I want to remember:

• We went to Holden Beach, NC and it was so crazy windy ALL WEEK LONG.  The wind never stopped blowing and the waves were BIG.  
• Nathan was a boogie-boarding phenom!  The adults would take turns with him out in the water, and he would wear out Gran, Daddy and Pawpaw and still be raring to ride more waves.
• Sarah had fun boogie-boarding too, but she was also really into digging pools and making walls and towers in the sand.  
• Andrew liked the beach, although his attitude mostly depended on his proximity to me.  The further away from him I was, the more likely he was to be having a melt-down.  Usually he's more of a Daddy's boy, but this week it was all about Mama.  
• We boiled shrimp on 4 out of the 6 days we were at the beach, had burgers once and fried fresh-caught red snapper once.  We ate GOOD! 
• Gran and Pawpaw were angels and got up with the kids at 6am every morning and took them out to the beach so that Brian and I could sleep in until an extravagantly late 8am (all the kids needed a real breakfast by then). 
• Because we don't have enough excitement in our lives. the AC on the van gave out about 2 hours into our 7.5 hour drive to the beach.  The highs were in the mid-90s that day.  So at lunch Brian dropped the kids and me off at Chick-fil-a and drove to the auto parts store to buy some tools so he could figure out the problem.  He did (of course!), but we needed to order new parts to fix it.  So the rest of the 5.5 hours to the beach was crazy awful: 95 degrees + humidity, Andrew only took a 20 minute nap with an hour of screaming on either side of the nap, we were running low on water so Brian and I basically had nothing to drink for the last 2-3 hours so we could save the water for the kids (we were not stopping until we got there!).  That night after we finally made it to the beach, Brian and I both admitted that during the drive we thought this might be a glimpse into what hell might be like.  Then Brian did some research and figured out the parts and tools he needed to fix the AC, overnighted them from Amazon to the beach house, but they were delayed due to the 4th of July and then we found out that the post office doesn't deliver on the beach road and therefore send our packages back to Amazon.  Plan B was for Brian to drive into Wilmington to buy what he needed, then he stayed up until 12am fixing the van so we would have AC on the way home.  Some people might have just taken their car to the repair shop, but that's only a last-ditch option if your a Kornrumpf.  (Brian did save us a bunch of money on the repair, which was nice.)