There are 290 pictures in the shared family album for beach week this year. Let’s try to make sense of it and all the other fun things from the week, including some epic putt-putt against the core family, and a raging pool-party for the Hamilton Lakes swim team.
What the heck is beach week anyways?
That might be the more important question to ask. Every year since Taylor was small, her and her moms-side of the family would go to the same beach in North Carolina, Ocean Isle Beach. This is part of the crowd in 2005. Looking fresh Kenna!
Anyways, while the Logan’s did our annual trips to spend the summers at Merriewald, this was where you could find the Register/Haney family.
The past 5 or so years, it has worked best to do family beach week during July 4th week.
A day at the beach.
Have you seen those pictures of the bumbling dads on vacation with the zinc-based, super-white sunscreen on their nose? Beach week is the opposite of that. It is serious.
A typical day (with kids) starts around 7. The kids will be lazy around the house and eat some breakfast: lucky charms, fruit snacks, sugar packets, or anything else sweet that they can get their hands on.
After breakfast, Taylor or I will go on a run, or take the kids to the new “splash pad” park, about 1/2 mile away.
Then, it should be close to lunch time. We feed the kids peanut butter jelly sandwiches, which they will refuse to eat, so we give them more sugar packets to hold them over until dinner, while the rest of us eat honey-baked ham on a sandwich, or other leftovers. They always taste better at the beach.
By now it is time to pack the cooler, and head down to the ocean. But don’t forget the wagon, umbrellas, bag for garbage, sunscreen, children’s sunscreen, beach toys, towels, flip flops, shoes for the kids (yes, both of them), snacks for the kids, cash, goggles, an abundance of beverages, koozie, chairs for everyone, swim-diapers, a book, and check with your wife to see if there is anything else needed. It is about 200 yards to the beach. My advice for a newcomer? Don’t mess this part up. This is the proving grounds.
Now that the stressful part is over, it is time for a drink. Or 19 drinks, depending on what you want out of the day.
On an unrelated note, here is a picture of Taylor’s grandma with her grandsons:
This year we are getting to a sweet spot: Rosie is old enough to swim mostly by herself. Mercy is not a small baby, and is getting pretty fun, and it was really a blast getting to hang with them.
Rosie was into the boogie board this year. She still wants me to watch her do all of the awesome things, and even though sometimes it is easier to engage in conversations with grown-ups and ignore Rosie’s requests, in a few years, she won’t be asking me to watch her boogie board anymore.
Mercy needed a nap most days. She tried to skip her nap and play with her cousins; it almost worked the first day, but she’s not quite ready to cut them out entirely. So, Taylor and I alternated days going back with her.
During the afternoon, the kids are getting a little hot and ready for some frozen sugar packets, so the italian-ice guy is always a hit:
A little before 5 is time to start planning to head back to the house. At this point it is best to just get into the right mindset for this: you are not a dad. you are a pack mule for the next 20 minutes. You feel no pain and there is no stopping for things like sand in your eyes.
Time to get the kids washed down, rinse the sand off, and shower and get ready for dinner. We eat like kings during beach week. Taylor’s dad, Ted, sets the bar pretty high when it comes to grilling steaks, and this is always the highlight of the week. If you ask Taylor, she can give you the rundown of the meals we eat each night of the week. This, too, is tradition. I will say, it is nice that each family cooks 1 meal during the week, so it is much easier to spread out this responsibility to many people.
In years past, we went to restaurants, but with kids, it’s just easier to stay in. Ocean Isle beach doesn’t have many restaurants, and during the summer, after the 20-25 minute drive to Calabash, the restaurants there are slammed anyways.
Its not the exact same every day though
Things are changing so much from year-to year, it is impossible to say what we do regularly now. But each part is pretty fun. This year, we brought the girls’ scooters:
Also a highlight during beach week is the July 4th parade on the island. This year, we were a bit proactive and brought decorations to put our golf-cart in the parade.
Props to Taylor on this one. She did it all.
This year we did take a few days at the pool. If you are squinting your eyes to see if I look different in this pic, stop, because this one isn’t me, but I did think it was a good pick of uncle D:
Also Rosie is getting to an awesome age now to do some fun things. My good-buddy Houston was also at OIB the same week as us, so Rosie and I got to go play putt-putt with them at Myrtle Beach one day. MB is about 30 minutes to an hour away, depending on what part of the beach you want to go to. But, they do have some epic putt-putt courses.
Why go to just putt putt when you can go to a putt-putt/candy/arcade/ice-cream spot? Honestly, it was pretty awesome. Here are Houston’s kids on the 12th hole:
Not really sure of the context of this next one:
If you were a normal person, you may ask, “Luke, why didn’t you get a picture of you and all of the Core family?”. Well, over the past 30 years, I’m not sure how many pictures I have together with Houston, but it is a lot. So, I didn’t add another this time around.
Unfortunately, Houston beat me by 1 stroke this year. What. A. Bummer.
Also, the fireworks at the beach were awesome. Cameras on phones are getting awesome: I have never been able to capture pics/videos of fireworks that come out right:
Pool Party
Whew, that last part was a lot. But, it would be a shame to not include this special part of the week. Rosie has been on the swim team at our neighborhood pool, and at the end of the year, they do a pretty epic party. They came in 2nd place in the city, and if I was a kid, this would be how I would want to celebrate:
Ok, it would be fun to elaborate on more, but that is all for now. 🙂