VB (part 5of 5) - The Beach

The girls loved the beach so much. Splashing in the waves was their favorite. They would run and squeal while jumping over the waves as they came crashing in. The last morning we played with another family that was also there for the same conference. They had twin 4 year old girls. A lady near by asked if I had 2 sets of twins daughters. Oh my, that would be crazy!
Charly enjoyed the beach sand, but not so much the water. It took forever to get her to actually put her feet down into the water. She enjoyed chilling in the tent so much more.Lucy loved every minute of the beach. Although, at one point, Leland and Lucy came screaming hysterically towards us. Sobbing very badly and creating a huge scene. I thought maybe one of them had been stung by a jellyfish or something serious, by the way they were acting. We finally figured out that Lucy had dropped her goggles into the water while passing them to Leland and were now swept out to see. Based on their reactions to the situation, other possible scenarios was a shark biting off their arm. Seriously hysterical. All for a pair of dollar store goggles being swallowed by the deep dark ocean.Leland overcame a lot of fears at the hotel pool, even eventually jumping off the side of the pool and off the diving board. She also would swim across the pool without holding onto Chuck. All of this was with her life jacket on. Maybe next year we will actually go to a pool more than 3 times during the summer and take swim lessons.During nap time, I enjoyed 2 hours of reading my book undisturbed while lying on the beach. Thanks to my cute hubby for staying in the hotel room with all three sleeping girls, it was fabulous.

VB (part 4 of 5) - Cavalier Hotel

We stayed in the Cavalier Hotel when we were in Virginia Beach. The tower we stayed in was oceanfront, just off the boardwalk. This is the view from the top of the hotel.


The historic part of the hotel is called the "hotel on the hill". It was pretty, but it was obvious that it is only opened for the summer months and not kept in the best condition in the open common areas. The girls loved the big rocking chairs to rock their "babies". Click on the picture and you can see the big 'L' with the girls so excited to standby by their letter.When the storm happened on the first night, our room flooded with the rain (the carpet was wet, but no visible water) since we were on the first floor. We chose not to change rooms, since I discovered that being on the first floor was fabulous. Our room was in the best location - with the sliding door right out to the pool, no balcony, and the closest room to the walkway to the beach. But the wet floors just made it musty, so we requested a fan to dry out the floor and blow out the smell.

Charly loved the fan. She was hilarious.

Virginia Beach - Part 3 of 5 Dinner

We decided to go out to dinner for the "experience" and not just the food. So we scoured the coupon books and decided on a teppanyaki style Japanese Steakhouse. Leland LOVED it. Lucy, not so much. Charly is happy anywhere as long as she's sitting next to mom.
Leland tried using chopsticks, ate sushi, and all the other food put in front of her. She was a delight.

Lucy was a bit skeptical to begin with, then when the fire came and the cook joked that it burned her eyebrows, she lost it and never recovered. She ate nothing.

You can see at the end, Leland's excitement and Lucy's skepticism.

Charly enjoyed the attention from everyone around her. A table next to us full of girls celebrating a friend getting married, burst into laughter as they watched Charly take her chewed up chicken and try to feed it to me. At least she likes to share, but I'm not a fan of chewed up food.
Our dinner was delicious and it was a fun splurge for our family vacation.

Virginia Beach - Part 2 of 5 Family Biking

Chuck had the idea to ride a surrey, or family bike, along the boardwalk. He took a few hours break from his meetings so we could do it. We all had so much fun. Charly enjoyed it a lot more than we thought she would. She would just squeal in joy when we started going fast.
It was a lot more work for Chuck and I than we thought it would be. We took lots of breaks along the way to see the sculptures (and rest our legs). The girls favorite was Neptune or as they called him King Triton, Ariel's father.

Virginia Beach - Part 1 of 5

The whole family was able to go to Virgina Beach for a long weekend. Chuck had a conference with work in an oceanfront hotel, so of course, the girls and I loved to tag along.

The first day was rough, though.

Lucy got carsick during the drive down - throwing up twice. Once in a Taco Bell bathroom and second in the car. Luckily, we stopped at a Wawa gas station where the employee pulled out a hose for us in the parking lot and we were able to hose down the blanket and towels that she caught it in.

Chuck had to go right into meetings when we got there. After eating lunch and getting into our room. We put on bathing suits to swim in the pool. Before we made it to the pool it started thundering. Then the rain and lightning came. There was no way I could keep the girls cooped up in the hotel room, so I let them go out and jump in the massive puddles that had formed. There was some confusion with our room and check-in date when we first go to the hotel, so we had been moved into a first floor room that is usually reserved for handicap guests. It turned out to be the best! Charlotte was able to nap in the room, while we played right outside on the sidewalk, with no balcony to make me nervous about. (My kids are the same age Chuck was when he fell off a 4th story balcony. I have a right to be paranoid!)

Back to the puddle jumping. It was so much fun! It was thundering and lightning. We would try to point out the lightning and then count till the thunder came. I think you only play this game as a kid in the South during the awesome summer thunderstorms. I'm sure everyone watching us from the balconies thought I was a crazy mother out there with my kids running around in our bathing suits. When we went inside to get ready to meet Chuck for dinner, the storm started to get worse. I turned on the TV to find out there was a tornado warning and a tornado had touched down not too far from our hotel. Nice.

The power went off and on a few times. Our room had water seeping in onto the carpet. The ceiling was leaking in Chuck's meeting. Not the best beach weather, but we had fun making the most of it.

The next morning, it was really windy. I took the girls to the beach in the morning. I think they would have lasted longer, but I could not handle the sand whipping against my legs with the 18mph winds.
(Note: I only had my phone to take pictures with when Chuck wasn't with us.)
We went to the pool for a few minutes before deciding that we needed something indoors until the weather was a little better. I decided to take the girls to Portsmouth. We went to a small children's museum called Andalo's Clubhouse. The big museum is under major renovation, so they have this small place to visit during the renovation. Charly is starting to have more fun at these type of places. I think she really enjoyed it since strollers were not allowed inside (since it was so small) and she had more freedom to crawl around. She's finally getting heavy to carry (a whopping 18 lbs now).

After the museum, we drove down by the water and checked out some of the big ships. It reminded me of when we lived in San Diego and made me really miss it.