Monday, September 6, 2010

**rewind - thursday and friday

i remember waking up on thursday morning.
feeling SO relaxed.
laying there and not having to JUMP up.
and calculating that we had been at the beach for 3 full days.
and we still had 3 full days left before we had to pack up and leave.
it had been so PERFECT so far and i was just so content and happy.

got up and went upstairs to the news that the county next to our had been issued a "mandatory evacuation". seems that during the night the hurricane decided to head STRAIGHT for where we were staying. some of our group was nervous and talking about leaving. but i was NOT going to leave unless we had to...

within the hour, OUR county was issued a mandatory evacuation.
we had no choice.
it was 9 am when we got the word.
it was a CRAZY 2 hours...packing, throwing SO much food away (makes me sick to think about it), calling a hotel to stay at that night to try to have a little more fun and not go all the way home.

at 11 am we were all on the road...leaving our perfect vacation behind.
it was awful.
the ayer's headed home, the mcclure's to visit friends in raleigh, the granger's to stay with tim's sister in raleigh, and the young's, fogarty's and us to williamsburg to Great Wolf Lodge.

got to williamsburg and ate lunch at sonic.
{between packing all our stuff and making hotel reservations, i couldn't quite get it together to think to PACK our lunches...that would have been smart...}
but it was a sweet few minutes of calm...just our family...





before we headed to this FUN place!
we've always wanted to go...but could never justify the expense.
this was an "emergency situation" so we did it. {sarcasm...just in case you couldn't tell...}

after unloading our car in the parking lot {taking the 5 bikes off the rack, taking the bike rack off, pulling everything out to figure out WHAT bags we needed for 24 hours at this hotel with a waterpark inside...INSANE!}

we waiting in the lobby for 3 hours for our room to be ready.
that just about put me over the edge.
actually, i think it did put me over the edge.
but i managed to hold onto the edge til the next morning when i had an UGLY breakdown...

we played at the waterpark for a couple hours.
then went out to dinner with the fogarty's and young's (who also joined us at the hotel!)

the room was fun, huh??

after the kids were all asleep, the boys met in one room {and hung out on the balcony} and the girls did the same in another room.

that was fun.
not exactly the "girls night out" we were going to have at the beach...but still fun! :-)

we ate cereal out of cups the next morning :-)

then spent the morning at the waterpark.
it was a pretty amazing place.
the kids had a BLAST!


bailey really felt like a "big girl" going on the water slides!


sawyer was pretty fearless, too!
walked up the stairs...

and went down the slide.
over and over and over again


there was this BIG waterslide that just rebekah and the adults could go on.
rebekah, ali and i went on it together.
we laughed SO hard.

and then rebekah went with the guys.

after eating lunch, we all headed out...

the young's and fogarty's headed home and we headed back to the beach.
i wasn't sure if this was the right decision...but it's what we did...i just couldn't bear to go home.

2 comments:

Katy said...

i was wondering where you headed to evacuate...i wish i had still lived in va beach - you could have come to see me!!! we LOVED great wolf lodge - my kids still talk about it! way to make a bad situation...better! :)

jenn said...

what a fun place for the kids! they probably didn't even have time to notice they were missing the beach! :)