Fun in the Sun

I want to thank everyone who prayed for us since our last blog. Sorry it has been a while. All the kids are doing very well and my health has improved greatly. My opthamologist has helped me a lot at a very reasonable cost. My vision has improved to the point that I can see fairly well with my glasses now. My next vision checkup is Thursday and I'm very thankful for the progress and my kind doctor.

   Before our September vacation, I went ahead and paid to see a doctor because I didn't want my leg pain to ruin another vacation. The doctor didn't run tests or do x-rays, but concluded that the symptoms sound like sciatica. He prescribed me some pain medication, but I am very happy to say that I only needed to take two halves the entire vacation. It has been a long unpredictable several months to see which way it would go, but i'm happy to report that I am in much less pain now. I experience regressions at times, but haven't had severe pain for at least a month or so. 

    Again, thank you all for your prayers and please keep them coming! Prayer works!

Nicholas waits for the next big wave. 

Our annual beach trip tradition began in 1988, a year after moving from Virginia to Georgia, we set out with our troupe of thirteen to spend a week in Myrtle Beach, SC. A vacation that would become a yearly tradition for over fifteen years. We chose the month of September, when the prices and crowds are down but the weather is perfect and the ocean is warm. My parents often came along back then, even Grammy Skippy, my mom's mom, flew down for a few days and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 Every year was perfect. We never had bad weather, even when Hurricane Hugo was threatening to ruin our week we chose to wait it out and the weather was beautiful up until the last day of our vacation, coincidentally, the day the city was evacuated. Just before we left we went out to the beach for one last look. It felt like a ghost town, nothing but empty beach and crashing waves. Another year an approaching Hurricane threatened to hit in the middle of our vacation, but ended up delaying for three days at sea, long enough for us to finish up our week and head home!

In 2005 there was an article published in People Magazine about our family. A sweet couple in Chicago read it and contacted with an amazing offer. They own a beautiful beach house in Gulf Shores, AL and offered our family annual visits, completely free of charge.  We really enjoyed the change, the house is large enough to accommodate everyone comfortably (we don't even have to use sleeping bags!) and the beach is always open and uncrowded. All this from a couple who had never met us, or our children, but trusted us with their vacation home for one, two, even three weeks at a time. We are so thankful for their amazing kindness and generosity.

Unfortunately, about five years later our good weather luck ran out. We missed our annual Gulf Shores vacation two years in a row due to hurricanes. This year we moved the trip to April, in hopes of avoiding a third disappointment. It was a nice trip, the sun shone bright but the wind and water were a bit chillier than expected and I was in a lot of pain due to sciatica. It made it difficult for any of us to fully enjoy the vacation. Because of this, we decided to splurge this year and return to our old friend Myrtle Beach this September. We chose a nice, very kid-friendly condo with two lazy rivers for us adults and and indoor water park for the kids! We figured even if bad weather struck again, the kids would still have a blast with all the slides, pools and fountains. We had the best of both worlds though, the weather was perfect, the ocean was warm and the beach was a huge hit!

Octatina

Cody had so much fun, he fell asleep!

"But I want to go back."