When we plan our family vacation, the babydoll has two requirements…a beach and a pool.  Because of this we have tended to find ourselves somewhere in Florida or California.  Don’t get me wrong we have traveled to some amazing cities that do not have a beach, but we can’t spend a week away and not have a pool.

This year we wanted to try something different.  We have heard from many people about Myrtle Beach, SC.  It’s funny to think that we’ve never been here, but have been to locations really close by.  We decided to make the drive (for several reasons – the cost of airfare is crazy stupid right now and there’s a boat load of stuff you need for the beach that we already had at home so why buy more when we get there to throw it away when we couldn’t take it back with us on the plane.) and headed out Saturday morning.  I have to have a side note really quickly…we left a lot later than we expected Saturday and one of the biggest reasons was my niece gave birth to her baby girl at 3am Saturday morning and we needed to get keys to my brother (the proud grandfather), who was dog-sitting for us, so we had to go to the hospital.  Of course we weren’t leaving without seeing my new great-niece who looks like a beautiful babydoll.  She reminded me so much of my babydoll.  There were a few complications with the birth (just like with my babydoll), but I’m confident babygirl will be just fine.  Now back to our vaca.

The drive was fun and very mountainy (is that a word?  it should be.) and we didn’t arrive at our hotel until around 11 (did you know that North Myrtle Beach is actually the name of the city and not a division of Myrtle Beach?)  We checked in and got on pajamas and checked out for the night.  I’m an early riser…so I was up at 6am the next day to a beautiful view of the beach.  It was my birthday…the big 4-0.  I was excited to begin our time here to see what everyone was raving about.

  That’s my supermodel.

Unfortunately I ate something for breakfast that deflated me.  It hit me while we were in the grocery store (which was about 30 minutes after breakfast) and stuck with me for the rest of the day.  My birthday dinner consisted of a piece of chicken from Bojangles (first time having that) and the ice cream cake that my hubby picked up while at the grocery store.  Another side note: some people would think an ice cream cake is cheesy, but my favorite dessert is ice cream and cake so this was perfect for my especially since it contained tow real layers of cake sandwiching vanilla ice cream.  I have got to make one of those when I get home. 

The babydoll did get to spend some time in the pool.

I think she would have had a hissy fit that would have made any “queen” be proud if she had not.

Stay tuned for more details of our trip.

How about your family…are there any big trips planned for the summer?

(I’m including a signature, tell me what you think.  Should it stay or should it go?)