4th of July Weekend - Virginia Beach, VA

For the weekend of the fourth we took our first official Lysse road trip to Virginia Beach to visit all of the Stones (Nana, Pop-Pop, Bob, Julie, Jenna, Rachel, and pets) and take Ellie to the beach for the first time! the car rid went as well as can be expected, we stopped about three times and them almost ran out of gas because she was sleeping and any stop might wake her up! Other than that as long as she was sleeping it was smooth sailing!

It was so good to see everyone and Ellie was just taking in all of the sights! The visit got off to a bumpy start when after only being there for about 15 minutes she slipped and whacked her mouth on the kitchen chair and was bleeding. Thank you Julie and Bill for keeping a cool head because I sure wasn't! I learned that I can handle blood on most anything except for my own child! Now that I know that I will try to work on it and try to be better next time something happens! Anyway, enough about that and on to our trip...

Here is Ellie and Daddy in front of 7-11 (Bill's favorite). What is a morning at the beach without capping it off with a Slurpee? Ellie threw her face into Bill's Coke Slurpee and came up licking her lips and smiling. I know Bill was thrilled! His legacy will live on and now he has a permenant Slurpee buddy! I, on th eother hand, was not so thrilled, I mean it was coke for heaven's sake. All of that caffine and sugar? Come on, she isn't even a year old yet!! So we settled on letting her have some of my sugar-free passion fruit Slurpee, and yes I know that there are all of theose chemicals in sugar-free things, but hey, it was a compromise!!
Here is Bill and Ellie in Bob and Julie's pool. She had a great time throwing her face in and squeeling when she pulled it out! We could hardly get her out, everytime we did she would whine to go back in!! She had a great time splashing and watching the girls bob up and down in the water. What a water baby!!
We went to the beach on Saturday morning bright and early to beat the crowds! At 8am it was already getting hot! Ellie was not too sure of the sand when we stood her up in it, she had a look on her face that said, "What is this?" We took her down to the water's edge and put her feet on the harder wet sand and she seemed to like that! She was amazed with the waves and the surf. she really liked the water washing up over her feet!
We got her wet up to her nimmies and she loved it, especially when the little swells would come up. She was splashing and kicking and having a great time until I set her down in the surf, it was high enough up on the beach where it was barely comming up over my toes. Wouldn't you guess it, as soon as I stepped back a random wave came up and knocked her on her on her back. She was not too happy about that one to say the least!! She came away unharmed with sand in her hair and a new found respect for the ocean. As for me, I felt like the worst mother in the world and I know it is not true, but I sure felt like it! After that she was less than thrilled about being at the beach and wanted to go back to the pool, there are no waves there!!
All in all our weekend went great and I can't wait to take her to a big-person pool or the beach again!! Our next trip is to Baltimore and we are opting to fly instead of driving, hopefully it will be easier!! Wish us luck and I will let you know how that went when we get back!