Virginia Beach-Myrtle Beach

The drive was a big nervewracking cuz for a while we were driving straight at Hurricane Michael until we ducked away towards MB. We didn’t have any service so was not able to check on which direction the hurricane was going, if anything had changed or anything. At one point it was raining super hard and we were eating dinner on a stop, and all ended up SOAKING wet. We arrived around 9pm to MB but were staying in an awesome hotel so everyone was pumped when we got there once we saw all the pools and music.  It was late and I was SO tired I literally fell asleep and everyone was still awake. The girls had fallen asleep in the car on the drive, so lorne told me he didn’t get them to bed until 1am (while I slept remember…oops)  So we woke up in the morning and it was CRAZY winds and rain, the effects of hurricane micheal passing beside us. Lorne and I took turns going down to the beach like the true tourists (all the locals are probably like why are these idiots all down at the beach) and Lorne found the girls a full conk-they were SO excited and yes now its travelling the rest of the trip with us. We went down to the pools but since they were all half outside, things were blowing everywhere that they ended up closing down all pools. As we were heading upstairs, this guy ‘Big Brad’ was standing at this desk and was like ‘what are you guys going to do today now’ and told us about a few indoor things to do with kids. I said well we don’t want to pay a ton of money to do something and he said ‘What if I can make it free’ you see some of you are already reading this saying ‘noooooo walk away now’ but no not me, Im a salespersons dream (I once called Lorne from a car dealership because I wanted to buy the last Volkswagen to ever exist……..) SO anyways Big Brad (another red flag) was like ‘yeah just go up to this place and check it out and fill out a short survey and you can have free tickets to this place” I was like SWEET! We have nothing else to do it’s a freaking hurricane outside anyways. So I convince Lorne who is LESS than impressed with me by this point to drive 30 mins in hurricane winds to this place. And oh yes, its EXACTLY what you think it was. Time shares. BUT they do it differently now with points and I thought it was a brilliant idea hahaha.  They fed us lunch, The kids got to play in this kidzone so they were super happy and we got to sit for 4 hours listening and talking to this poor lady. After we FINALLY got to leave this place (like we have been there from lunch and now its dinner time) We are driving back, Lorne is legit not talking to me anymore lol but they gave us a gift card to a few restaurants and one was Mexican which is Lornes fav so I input that on the GPS and we drove there. At first me and the kids went in because Lorne was so upset, but even he cant resist free taco’s and beer so we caved and came in. We drank some margarita’s until it became a little funny…k that’s not true, it was only a little funny to me. We went back to our hotel and now the pools were open, so we let the kids stay up super later and swim and play for hours, we also took a family walk down the beach at night. Because of the earlier waves, the entire beach was covered in shells so we beachcombed for a while and the lights from all the Oceanside hotels lite it up so it was super cool.

In the morning the splash pad in our hotel was open so we took the kids to play there and then since we had endured the time share experience, we had free tickets to Wonder Works-a sweet indoor playland and science center for kids. We spent the day there and then drove to Colombia SC-where I was going to do a Triathlon in the morning.

Myrtle Beach-Colombia

The drive from Myrtle Beach – Colombia was around 3ish hours….but again nothing is ever what it says it is. I was doing a triathlon in the morning so we had to be there by 6 because I was renting a bike so we got there just in time and get the bike, then get the bike out to the van. Then we just stood there for a bit staring into the completely packed van with this bike, trying to figure out how on earth we could fit this in.  Again, theme of the trip, Lorne is less than impressed with how I thought this was going to work. We ended up basically taking the bike apart and stacking the pieces into the van.  We were staying at a hotel there so on the drive there I saw a sign for ‘Golden Corral’ (if you go to the states, you know this place is sweet.)  I barely got the words out “look theres a golden corral” before Lorne had turned into the parking lot. We went in and introduced our kids to the hidden secret of the BUFFET.  Our girls were in heaven. Mackenzie just kept saying over and over again ‘thank you mommy thank you mommy’ and then I took them to the dessert buffet table. And I let them go WILD. Chocolate fountain? Sure. 2 brownies-here ya go.  I totally won favourite mom after this. We then went to our hotel and went to bed as I had a triathlon early in the morning.

I woke up at 5am to do a Triathlon.  When I woke up it was of course the coldest day we have experienced our whole trip.  I woke everyone up super early and they drove and dropped me off at the race before 7am. It was so cold and windy that God decided to feel bad for me and cancel the ‘swim’ portion of the triathlon turning it into a duathlon.  So it was a 21 mile/40 km bike and 7km run.  When I was done the famjam picked me back up and we stuffed the bike back into the van and went to return it. Then we headed to Virginia.