Matthew Monday: At Myrtle Beach

I mentioned the other day we are having major work done at our house.  It’s been going on five weeks now, and we are seeing progress.  The living and dining rooms are done, except for a few minor things.  We’ve got a working television finally.  The kitchen has progressed but still behind.  There’s a few floor tile that still needs to be mortared in.  They had miscalculated the quantity and fell short.  So that will be put in when the backsplash behind the countertop is mortared on.  The cabinets are all in and the counter top is on.  We have electric power and ceiling spot lights in, and the microwave is operational.  But still need the plumbing completed and the gas line hooked to the oven.

I also mentioned I took the family away for nearly a week to get away from this.  We drove down to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  It’s a ten hour drive, but we broke the trip into two five hour legs in both directions. 

I don’t know what’s so special about Myrtle Beach.   It was a nice beach.  It was not as nice as our trip to Ft. Walton Beach Florida earlier in the year.  That was the purest beach I had ever seen.  I would say Myrtle Beach was as nice as the New Jersey Beaches, which are also very nice, but I could have gone to the Jersey Shore with just a couple of hours driving.  I guess what makes Myrtle Beach renown is their golf courses.  I don’t golf, so I guess that allure was wasted on us.  Still we had a nice time.  The first day we got there the weather was brutal, something like 95F (35C) and 100% humidity.  But it rained at night and the weather was more pleasant, though still hot, the remaining three days. 

Here are some pictures of Matthew at the beach.

With his Batman Beach towel;

No we didn’t dig this hole.  We found it and took it over.

The water was so warm.  I would love to live near an ocean beach with water that warm.

And Matthew just loved the water, though he was afraid to go above his belly.

Matthew Monday: I Spy

We, my wife, Matthew, and I were driving on a long trip, a vacation down to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  The entire drive takes about ten hours non-stop, but I figured Matthew is not ready for such a long non-stop trip, and so I broke the drive into two five hour halves.  Of course that assumes you don’t hit any traffic, and there was an hour delay on the New Jersey Turnpike (I guess it was for construction, but we didn’t actually see anything) and an hour and a half in the Washington D.C. area, which I guess was just because of volume.  As it turned out, even a five hour leg was too much for Matthew. 

How do you keep an active, talkative four-almost-five year old boy busy while strapped to his child seat in the back alone?  You don’t.  I’m mean, yeah, there are songs and talk games, but that gets old for adults, especially adults that are over fifty.  You want a little peace and quiet after a while.  No wonder some of these new minivans come with DVD players.  But we don’t have one.  We have our eleven year old SUV, which as it turns out turned eleven years to the day on that day.  You can give him some little toys to play with, but shortly thereafter he drops it and can’t reach it.   

And after a while, he doesn’t shut up.  Ahhhh!  He can’t go sixty seconds without saying something.  

One game we played to keep him occupied was “I spy.”  One person in the car sees something on the road, say a blue pickup truck, and says, “I spy blue pickup truck,” and everyone looks around and tries to identify it. 

Daddy: “I spy a big tree.” 

Matthew:  “That one Daddy, over there?” 

Daddy: “Yes.” 

Matthew: “My turn now.  I spy a white bus.” 

Mommy, who is driving: “It just passed us.” 

Daddy:  “I spy motorcycle.” 

Matthew:  “There’s one.  I want to go now.  I spy…”  There’s a delay here while he looks around for something to identify.  “I spy…uh…something grey and black.” 

Daddy, looking around and not seeing anything: “Do you mean this charcoal car?  It’s kind of grey and black.” 

Matthew:  “No.”  Everyone is looking around. 

Mommy:  “What’s grey and black?” 

Matthew:  “Daddy’s head!”   

Big, big laughter from the two of them.  Haha.  Me not so much. I could manage a smirk.