Myrtle Beach Vacation-- Part 1

We have returned from our fabulous vacation to Myrtle Beach! We had an amazing time and I am really feeling a little overwhelmed about the idea of blogging it all... so I'm going to break it up into a couple separate posts, starting with (of course)the water!

We spent a week in Myrtle Beach visiting my brother, Tim, who lives there, and vacationing with our great Mississippi friends, the Edwards family. Tim works for a great resort, the Springmaid Beach Resort. If you remember, my family visited Tim for a long weekend about this same time last year (click HERE). On that trip, LL wasn't able to join us, so we started talking about going back this year, and since Myrtle Beach is pretty much equidistant from Starkville MS and from our house, the Edwards' decided to join us. We had SUCH a great time. This is the first time we've gone on a vacation with another family, and it was sooooooo much fun! Scott and Lydia have a little boy, Reed, who just turned 2,and he and Collette had a great time playing together. In fact, every morning when Collette woke up, the first thing she did was go over to the door that adjoined our rooms and ask "Please? Please?" so she could go see Reed. So cute. Here are a few of the good times these two had in the hotel room:




And here's one for the baby book: Collette's first kiss! (Unprompted, even!)

The resort is right on the beach, and our rooms overlooked the ocean and the Springmaid Pier. Beautiful!

LL and Collette on the balcony:

Most mornings we would go to the beach for an hour or so, and then move to pool time. Collette is such a little fishy and LOOOOOVED the ocean. The girl has no fear. She would charge right in and didn't even want to hold LL's hand.



She would sit in the ocean and just laugh when the waves crashed down on her.

But playing in the sand was pretty cool, too.




Why yes, those ARE monogrammed beach pails! Really, did you expect anything less from a Mississippi girl? (Thanks, Lydia!)







After the kiddos wore themselves out at the beach, we would go to one of the 6 pools at the resort, 3 of which were designed just for kids. We would usually swim in both the morning and in the afternoon at the pools-- the kids were able to play in the water and and we were able to watch them and still relax. It was heavenly!

We also brought pool floats for the kids to use in the bigger pools and in the 2 lazy rivers, although both Reed and Collette preferred not to be confined to the floats (big surprise, huh?).

I'll tell you about some of the other fun things we did soon! :o)