Mountz Memoirs: Mountz Family Vacation

Sunday morning Jon and I woke up early to try to pack the car and clean up the house before church. We decided to go for the first service and skip Sunday School in order to arrive at the house in the early afternoon. Ellie was up early so I had a nice start to the day but we still did not get packed up in time for church. We went to church and then came back and I put Ellie down for a nap while we finished packing and cleaned up. Jon packed the car well enough that I could bring along my sewing stuff - he's the best! We did fill up both seats next to Ellie so she had to go into her carseat from the front seats. After Ellie had slept for forty-five minutes I took her from the crib and put her in the car and hoped she'd fall back to sleep...fat chance.
The drive to Harvey Cedars was about two and a half hours. We stopped on our way at an Arby's since we had a coupon. We arrived at the house around 3:00 and I unpacked our suitcases while Jon unpacked the car and Ellie hung out with Cecelia and Aunt Amanda.
After Jon finished the car I brought Ellie upstairs for a possible nap. Although Ellie did not nap she did notice her reflection in the mirrors. Our closet doors were big mirrors and Ellie loved looking at herself. She even waved for the first time (well, the first time that it actually seemed intentional). Later Jon came up (after I announced that the nap was a failure) and Ellie clapped. Slow down, baby girl!
We had a great time on vacation. It took Ellie a while to fall asleep the first few days but by the end she was getting the hang of nap time. Poppop and Nana frequently offered to stay at the house while Ellie napped so that Jon and I could spend more time at the beach - it was wonderful! Pop-pop would make us all breakfast each morning (eggs, blueberry pancakes, sausage, etc), we would head to the beach and then all do our own thing for lunch, then eat dinner all together. It was similar to how we did things at Myrtle Beach and it worked out well.
Ellie started the week out by waking up at 5:30 in the morning. Although the times became later (the latest was 7:15, I believe) we did take the opportunity to run on a couple occasions. Once we went for a bike ride with Ellie in the baby seat on the back. Our second run we brought Ellie along in the jogging stroller - a stroller makes running a lot more taxing! The coast is a wonderful place to run because there aren't any hills.
Harvey Cedars is a great beach. It wasn't busy at all and we were there over the Fourth of July! One day a friend from college approached me on the beach and said hi - small world. Ellie came with us to the beach a few times (the first three days it wasn't very nice so we didn't spend a lot of time on the beach) but she didn't like the sand. It's hard to keep a baby happy when she doesn't like sand! The people who owned the beach house had a kiddy pool that we could take to the beach and Ellie loved that. We would set it up in front of us and she would spend almost an hour splashing around. Once I didn't bring the pool and I just gave her a bucket of water and that kept her happy for a while. I tried to convince her to like the sand by sitting her in it where it was slightly hard from the water but she would not be persuaded.
One of my favorite aspects of the beach is reading books. Jon read a book I bought him two years ago for his birthday and I read a book Kelly lent to me (Sparkly Green Earrings - a fantastic read) and a book Donna brought (A Room with a View, another good read for different reasons). I forgot how enjoyable it is to read until I have time to actually start and finish a book before I forget the story line.
Instead of going into the nitty gritty details of what we did each day (eat, go to the beach, read, eat, go to the beach, read, try to put a baby to bed, eat) I'll post the pictures I took.