Ryan Gets Stitches

 9:30 p.m. Cousins playing in the indoor pool.  Having a great time.  Jumping off the side.  We notice the floor is slippery.  Hmmmmm. . . . Boom!  Ryan falls on his face.  Gets up and looks okay.  Then we notice the blood pouring down his neck.  I make Shelby look at his chin because the blood has me feeling sick.  He has a gash on his chin.  Paul, Ryan and I are off to find the closest emergency room.

 11:30 p.m.  We get inside the emergency room and wait in a room while the medicine takes effect and numbs his chin.

 2:00 a.m.  Ryan is fast asleep.  The doctor comes in to sew him up.  The doctor explains that Ryan will wake up and it could be difficult.  A lot of children scream and thrash while they're getting stitches.  He brings two nursing assistants in to hold Ryan down.  The doctor requests that one of them be the male nursing assistant after I tell the doctor that Ryan is very strong.

 2:30 a.m.  Ryan slept through the stitches.  The doctor and the nursing assistants are all amazed.  Paul and I explained that we work very hard to tire our children out by filling their day with tons of activities and exercise.  We are a success as parents!  (except for allowing Ryan to gash his chin)

8:00 a.m. the following morning.  Paul finds a way to make Ryan smile even though he's not allowed to submerse his chin in water.  He's upset about not being allowed to use the slide at the pool, but Paul promises he will have fun today.

Kids in the Kitchen

The resort had Kids Club activities daily.  They kids favorite activity was called "Kids in the Kitchen". We met in the lobby and they were each give a Chef's Hat and then materials to decorate their hat.  

Then we went into the kitchen, met the Chef and learned about making chocolate chip cookies.  Chef gave them each a ball of cookie dough batter and they shaped it however they liked.  Ryan made a star and David made a big circle cookie.

  

 After baking the kids decorated the cookies with icing and sprinkles.  Ryan loved this part.  He was so happy to be in the kitchen.  He was so excited to stand beside the Chef for his picture.  He loves cooking.

After all the cookies were done they put them in boxes and then we took them out to a table beside the pool so we could all enjoy them.  Delicious!   

South Caroline Fishing Expedition

 We took the boys fishing on the Hurricane Fishing Expedition on Wednesday morning.  We got their early and watched the crew preparing the bait.  The fish love shrimp.

 Ryan was the first person in our family to catch a fish.  He caught a little sea bass.  He was very pleased with himself.

 David caught a large sea bass (18 inches) and a large flounder.  He was very pleased too.

We all caught lots of fish.  We had two lures on each of our rods and we ended up with two fish most of the time.  It was really fun.  A lot more fun than I anticipated.  If we weren't catching fish the boat would move on to the next spot within a few minutes.  There weren't any long waits.  The toughest part was keeping up with reeling in the fish.  We had some tired arms!  

 Our catch!  We ended up giving them away to a family that had a house and could cook them.  We didn't think the hotel would appreciate us keeping the fish in our room.  :-)

Broadway at the Beach

We visited Broadway at the Beach our 2nd night in Myrtle Beach.  The kids loved this guy acting like a statue.  He really scared Ryan when he moved.  The kids were all trying to touch him and jump on him after that.  We had to drag them away.    

Lego had a discovery station set up.  They had instructions for building all sorts of things.  The kids all loved the race car building station and the race track.  

 Lots of work went into building the fastest race cars.   I'm not sure who built the fastest car.

First Day at Myrtle Beach

 The boys were excellent in the car.  They used the wireless headphones and listened to episodes of  Arthur and Phineaus & Ferb.  They had to sit through a stop at the Honda dealership to check out why the van was "bucking" during our starts and stops.  Ryan enjoyed the stop immensely because he escorted me to Target and picked out Star Wars toys.  :-)  

 The kids were all in the pool the first day.  They loved the water slide and the water slide attendant (Sherry).  She gave Ryan lots of tips about swimming - "scoop and kick" she would yell as soon as he hit the water.  His swimming improved a ton on this trip.  Thank you Sherry!  ;-)

 The ocean was warm and they all jumped right in.  They enjoyed showering the sand off when they walked back to the pool.  (We didn't tell them that the beach was closed the day before because someone was bitten by a black shark.  The evacuated the ocean once while we were in it because the lifeguard saw fish jumping.  It's supposed to be a sign of shark/predators in the area.)  We didn't see any!

Delgrosso's

We went to Delgrosso's on Sunday with Shelby, Kelsey and Kaitlyn.  Perfect sunny day for water slides and rides.

All the kids are tall enough to ride the slides this summer.  David and Kelsey rode together and Shelby rode with Kaitlyn and Paul and I took turns with Ryan.

David is Kelsey were both tall enough (over 48 inches) to ride the fast slides this year.  They loved it!

This year Ryan is over 42 inches.  He was able to ride the swings!

My brave guys got on the XScream!  David said it wasn't scary at all.  He didn't even scream.  Yikes!

All the kids are now allowed to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl without an adult!  Yay!!!

Kids Bunco Party

 My Bunco group hosted a Kid's Bunco party on Saturday morning.  The boys always wonder what I do while I'm out playing Bunco once a month.  My group organized a Kid's Bunco Party so they could find out.  We had 16 kids playing ranging in ages from 4 - 12.

 The boys caught onto the game right away.  Ryan did great writing his W's and L's on his score card for wins and losses.  David was super focused on winning every game (Big Surprise! :-)  He calmed down once I explained that there are prizes for having lots of Losses as well as Wins.

 After Bunco we had snacks - muchkin donuts, muffins, cookies and juice.  Ryan was not shy about getting to the snack table.  He loved the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

 After Bunco we taught the kids to play LCR (Left Center Right).  They each had 3 quarters to play.  The winner took home $9.00.  We should have given this a bit more thought and used gold fish or chips.  Three kids were crying by the end of the game.  We usually play with dollar bills.

 All the kids smiled for the picture at the end of the party.  (Extra big smile from the winner of LCR.)  It was a fun morning.  I only felt a little strange spending the beautiful Saturday morning in my friend's basement teaching my kids how to gamble.  ;-)

Strawberry Season

 We headed over to Way Fruit Farm to pick strawberries on Friday morning.  It's addicting to pick strawberries.  Once you start moving the leaves around you can find so many.  We had a hard time stopping.  We picked 6 pounds of strawberries!  They were delicious.  We ate them plain and made strawberry and spinach salad and strawberry cobbler.