Myrtle Beach

Our family summer trip was to the Carolinas to visit the Knells and go to a Blood family reunion at North Myrtle Beach!

Having kids helps me to appreciate the airport floor art.

Ready to fly!

Annie's teeth have been falling out left and right over the summer! This one was particularly entertaining. We called it her Nanny McPhee tooth. 

Mom Blood treated us to an awesome 14 bedroom house! All of the Bloods except for James and his family were there- 41 people total! The upstairs loft had a foosball table and table shuffleboard. The main level had a pool table and theater room that was mainly inhabited by the teenage cousins. 

Mary brought some kind of game that resulted in Megan doing a lot of pushups. She rocked it. I love hanging out with the Bloods. We spent lots of time catching up, playing games, and watching Aaron fix Megan's website for her new family picture digitization business. 

We got a room with two queen beds. The positions we found our sleeping kids in was quite amusing. Isaac and Annie both move a lot in their sleep resulting in interesting snuggles/tangles, and Elliot was always right on the edge trying to be as far away from them as possible. 

The backyard had a pool and hot tub, which mysteriously turned green for a day. Luckily the pool guy got it fixed up quickly because we were using that pool every day!

Annie and little Catherine really hit it off this beach trip. Catherine and Elise took it upon themselves to introduce Annie to the world of Taylor Swift, and some sweet dance parties ensued.

The windswept joy of the beach! I didn't take my phone to the beach, so I'm glad Claudia braved it to snap some pictures. We were a short walk from the beach next to a big resort. It was more crowded than we were used to since it was the 4th of July weekend, but still not too bad. There's nothing better than a pack of cousins hanging out at the beach!

We were there over the 4th of July. There were firework shows all up and down the beach! Our crew had glowstick lightsaber battles underneath the fireworks, which was delightful until Ethan and Elliot got a little too violent, and I had to take a wounded Elliot back to the house. 

We also played with some streamers and poppers in the parking area. Thanks, Grandma Blood!

One of the proudest moments of my life was when Catherine, Bree, Ethan, and Eli came up to me in the kitchen saying that they had caught a big bucket of sand crabs and asking me to fry them up for them. We did this in previous years, and it was delightful that my young padawans are now expert sand crab hunters!

Foraged Fry Cook action shot

They were a hit! Eli in particular couldn't get enough of them, which made me proud since I know he's a picky eater. He was very taken with the whole process. 

We had a pretty constant churn of food to keep 41 people running! Luckily there were 3 fridges and 2 mostly working ovens. 

One day the oven repair guy came in, saw the scene of the full Blood crew eating lunch, and turned around and left without a word. We had to hunt someone down to send another repair guy out because we used both ovens most days.

It seems worthwhile to document our meal planning spreadsheet. 

Here's a very cute boy pretending like he eats meals.

One lame part of trip is that I got my lab results back and found out that I had gestational diabetes. I had to figure out how to get a glucose meter while on vacation. Luckily, Michael and Ally Rollins have some experience, and they were able to give me a demo on how to use it. The internet and health-conscious Bloods gave me some good tips on how to keep my blood sugars down. It was fairly tragic avoiding ice cream and treats while at the beach. I eventually figured out what to eat and was a pretty good diabetic by the end of the week!

A bunch of us went to putt putt golf one evening. Here's our "scared of dinos" face

On our last night we went to Barefoot Landing, which is a place I went with my family quite a bit growing up. They have built it up a lot!

I had to take this picture of Claudia, the biggest purple fan I know, in the Purpleology store. 

Our family outside of the rocks and crystals store. 

The next morning was Sunday. Most people hit the road early, so the few of us that were left got to hustle to empty out the fridges and clean out the house before checkout time. We went to church in North Myrtle Beach where we had the most entertaining Sunday school lesson I have ever attended. The teacher was an utterly delightful elderly southern woman who told the story of Ammon with alternating humor and wisdom. I was so glad we stayed for 2nd hour of church.