Myrtle Beach 2026

 We did a repeat of last year's vacation and went back to Myrtle Beach, and even stayed at the same resort. I don't normally like doing that, I prefer to see new places, but the boys really liked the place we stayed and there are a lot of places to go and things to do there, so it was an easy choice. I have travel anxiety, but the familiarity of going somewhere we've been before helped to calm some of that. Getting there and already knowing the parking situation and where to go was helpful, too. 

I booked our condo in January, initially on the ninth floor, but a few months later, I got a message from our host saying the unit had sold and offered me two other options. One was on the third floor and the other on the fourteenth. We thought the higher one would have a better view, so that's the one we chose. We didn't factor in the suckiness of the elevator on a floor that high when we made that decision. During the day, it was common for us to get stopped on multiple floors on our treks up and down. We're take-the-stairs kind of people, but not for that many floors. We'll keep that in mind if there's a next time. We'll also keep in mind that we will never want a room ending in the 59-62 because they're the closest to the elevators, which means they get the most noise. I have trouble sleeping away from home (and at home 🙄), so I don't need any extra distractions. 

Speaking of, I think people should be booked on floors according to whether they are morning or night people. In case you don't know, if you're coming back to your room at 11pm, you shouldn't be shouting in the hallway. Apparently, there are adults out there who don't know this, so here's a PSA. We loosened our bed time rules and let the boys stay up as late as they could manage, but it's still common courtesy to be quiet in hallways. That's Pre-K 101. You also shouldn't smoke weed on your balcony and stink up other people's rooms. I don't care they wanna do it, I just don't wanna smell it 🙄. 

One of the reasons I wanted to come back to Compass Cove was because I knew the bed situation was good for us. In the living room there is a Murphy bed, so two sides were close to the wall, which is a necessity for keeping the boys safe. The foot met the couch and I gated up the open side with the kitchen chairs. Ash likes to travel in his sleep, but that seemed to work to keep them contained 😂.

This is why I can't sleep with him

The condo was tiny, as condos typically are, which had pros and cons. The pro was that the kids weren't afraid to do things by themselves like they are at home. Ash sat in the bathtub by himself because I could see him from the kitchen table. Whenever I was ready to go to bed, Quinn was still awake and I told him if he didn't lay down then, I wasn't going to lay with him until he fell asleep. He said he didn't care and I went to the bedroom. He also laid down like two minutes later though 😂. 

One of the cons was trying to keep them from wrestling and being rowdy in such a small space, where they could break something and annoy the neighbors. Of course, the neighbors didn't seem to care about annoying me, so I probably should've given that one less consideration. My only complaint, which isn't really a complaint, about the resort is I wish there was something to do outside that didn't involve water. They liked the beach but didn't want to be there 24/7. We spent tons of time at the pool, but that can get boring after a while. We went to a playground, but it's a drive to get there. I kinda wish there was one on site. Then again, while it's nice having options, giving them too many just means they're always on the hunt for the next thing. These children love to play "anywhere but here," and I find it exhausting. We gotta start focusing on enjoying the moment we're in, instead of thinking about what we're gonna do next. 

They loved jumping in the waves. They were a little rough one day, and I was holding onto Ash (they both had life jackets) so that he didn't get pulverized, but he just kept yelling at me to let go of him. That 4 year old independence is so fun 🙄

Pool 1 of 4

1 of 6 hot tubs

      

 Still the coolest playground I've ever seen. They were right at home chasing a squirrel up a tree 🤦🏻‍♀️

The first place we hit up after we arrived and unloaded was Walmart to get groceries for the week. That place was PACKED, worse than the first of the month here at home. The boys were antsy after riding for so long and Philip and I were completely overstimulated. The only good things to come of it were not having to eat out much, and I was able to find some new products for the boys that I'd seen online that our Walmart doesn't have. Quinn is a picky eater and getting him to eat any source of protein is a struggle. He was all about these 67 chicken nuggets though! Ash got Saja Boys Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, and he was very happy with that find. 

Do you remember those Snickers commercials where the catch phrase was, "You're not you when you're hungry?" Quinn could star in one. 

He was also excited about his Spiderman cookie

We did eat out some, too. We chose this week for our vacation because it was the week of our anniversary. Can you guess the extra special place we went to eat to celebrate?? That's right, Wendy's. Nothing says happy 18 year wedding anniversary like a burger, which I got sans diarrhea lettuce, thanks to the suggestion of the worker. That was very helpful, but she also used the F word, very casually, in conversation with me, which made our celebration extra exciting 😂. It's a good thing that's like one of my favorite words. Just not when children say it 🙃. Iykyk.

 We also visited some candy stores and got ice cream most days. The Sweet Life Candy Shop is massive! It has bins upon bins of loose candy that you can mix and match and buy by the pound. Quinn made a rookie mistake and mixed M&Ms and Skittles and I couldn't wait for him to have a handful 😂. I did warn him, but I wasted my breath because he told me the lime and chocolate were good together. I swear that boy doesn't have tastebuds 😜.

string candy as long as his arm

looking all serious with his gummy eyeballs

M and S madness

I didn't care about the candy, but the ice cream was top notch. I had cake and ice cream flavor and it was great!

Another ice cream place we visited was Scoops. I thought my friend told me she had been to one, so I wanted to try it. If it's a national chain, I think we found the worst one there is. Their menu looked enticing, boasting flavorful creations that could be served atop a waffle, but the very elderly lady working there told me they weren't doing waffles and ruined my day 😂. Waffles are in my top five favorite foods, so that was a bummer. I still enjoyed my Gooey Butter Cake flavored ice cream, but it had so much potential to be better. 

Ash said he didn't want any, but then changed his mind. The restaurant was split into two sides, one pizza, one ice cream, and only had the one lady manning both. After getting mine and Quinn's, she had sauntered back over to the hot side and disappeared in the back. We had already waited quite a while to get the first round, we didn't know if a second was even going to be possible 😂. I tried to share mine but he didn't want the flavor I had, so Quinn graciously agreed to share his with his brother. 

The boys were super excited to go to Big Air, the trampoline park that we visited when we were in Myrtle Beach last year. 

 

I have lots of videos that I can't upload here, but they did all kinds of tricks off of this platform

Quinn was able to grab that rope and run along the perimeter

They battled lots of times and Ash started getting upset because he always lost, so Quinn let Ash attack him while he was unarmed 😂.

I couldn't stop laughing at Quinn's sock situation. He couldn't be convinced to sacrifice his style and remove his Nike socks, so I suggested he wear his trampoline park socks over them and he was down 😂. His clothes are very important to him.

Quinn's style was star again when we went to the Grand Prix Family Race Park. Despite the fact that the temperature was in the 90's, he chose to wear an all black ensemble, featuring a shark tooth statement piece necklace 😂. He cracks me up with what he deems cool. The high temperature did suck, but it kept the lines down, so it ended up being a great time to go!

 Quinn was tall enough to drive on his own for most of the tracks, but he only chose to on the one Ash could also drive on. 

Ash had never driven anything before, unlike Quinn, who had a Power Wheels tractor when he was his age. The poor kid pulled out and went the wrong way in the loop. The operator had to go and turn him around. He was embarrassed, he didn't want to drive again or even ride with me or Philip. 

I got him calmed down and he liked doing the bumper cars and the other rides

 

He thought he was so cool doing a wheelie on that motorcycle, even though he wasn't the one controlling it

They made me ride this one that suddenly drops with them and it was awful 😂.

Quinn's face makes me laugh. This ride threw them sideways when it went around the turn super fast

Our last excursion was to the boardwalk, and then to Ripley's Mirror Maze and Illusion Lab. They tell you to wear gloves and to keep yours arms out in front of you, to feel for the mirrors, so that you don't splat. Of course, in true 7 year old fashion, Quinn took off, with Ash following behind. I saw them go and directed them to come back, cautioning them not to run. Quinn did what Quinn does and ignored me, and when he ran smack into a mirror, face first, I couldn't contain myself 😂. He was fine, luckily. It taught him an important life lesson 🤪.

 

Boardwalk photo ops

My favorite part of that day 😂

He followed the instructions I gave him in this pic to make it look realistic 😂

Quinn took this pic of me at a bad angle. Photo editing has come a long way 😏

I didn't plan it, but I would have, had I thought about it--the full moon is so cool to see at the beach! I was so mad that I forgot to bring my good camera with me 😭. 

🥰

The full moon made it even more fun to be out at night when we were searching for ghost crabs. We always see people at the beach with flashlights, so Philip asked Google what they were doing. We had no idea what size they were, so I was shocked at how small they were. Ash was the first to find one!

He really wanted to hold one but those suckers are fast!

It's a good thing we never saw any crabs in the day time, or they never would've agreed to get buried in the sand 😂

When we're out of our routine, we never quite know how vacation is going to go, but I didn't have family showing up, coincidentally and unplanned, at our same resort, on my bingo card! Nate and Carly came to vacation a few days after us, and when Carly asked in the family group chat where we were staying, we discovered we were all at the same spot. It completely blew our minds. There are so many places to stay, what are the odds that they'd chosen the same as us?!

Philip's mom wanted us to take a group photo for her, and Ash was a uncooperative 🙄. This is the nice version 

We took a second "special," one for her, as well 😈. Ash at least looked at the camera for that one. He didn't participate in our shenanigans, but he was all about flipping off the entire beach after the photo was taken 😂

 

July 2026

July arrived during a heat wave, but we did a 5k in 900 degree weather anyway 🫠 🥵🥵🥵. It was a color fun run put on by Parks and Rec, who geniusly provided towels in ice water, which was the only thing that saved me from having a heat stroke 😂. Quinn ran with Philip and I walked while pushing Ash in the wagon shortly after we started and he decided he couldn't walk anymore 🙄. Kim got roped into doing it, too, with her daughter in law and grandsons, so I had someone to walk with, at least.

 

🥰🥰🥰🥰

They had a raffle and Asher won a huge flag! Thanks to his graduation ceremony at Little Red Schoolhouse, all flags are grand ole flags to Ash, and he was so excited to have won one 😂.

Poor Sophie got marked in the aftermath 😂

The 4th of July weekend was busy with Arts in the Park, and then a gathering with my family, and then one with Philip's. 

Quinn's BFF, Ravi, was at the park, too, and they had a great time with the axe throwing inflatable. They would intentionally throw it as high as possible onto the target, and then parkour themselves up to grab it 🤦🏻‍♀️. It only resulted in one collision, which was impressive for the amount of time they spent doing that.

Quinn and Ravi teamed up for the balloon toss, so I partnered with Ash. He did better than expected, with both catching and throwing.

We came back home for a cookout with Greg and Lori's family that evening. 

The boys made paper rockets, which Ollie really enjoyed shooting at me 😂

 

They had fun with sparklers

We went to see Nana and Juju, too, and the boys fun had playing with their skee ball game and swimming in their hot tub 

Quinn got to prove me wrong about that tooth timeline that I mentioned last time, and knocked one out of his face three days before his birthday 😂. He was stunting on Ash's balance bike, riding with his feet on the seat 🤦🏻‍♀️ when he fell and smacked his face on the handlebars, effectively removing that wiggly tooth. He had already been working on it, so he just finished the job in a dangerous way. He was upset when he told me about his accident, but he perked up at the end of the story when he showed me his extracted tooth 😂. I told him at least he got a good story out of it. 

🦷

Later that week, Hannibal Pool was having a free swim day so we decided to do something out of our norm. We took Lincoln with us and all three ended up going off of the high dive 😳😳😳. Ash is much braver than Quinn, so of course he went first out of the two of them 😂.

 

They're both braver than me, who has no desire to ever go off of it 🤪

That pool day really wore Asher out. The next day was Quinn's birthday, and of course he got up at his normal ass crack of dawn time. He wanted to open his gifts, so I told him to hang on so I could go see if Ash wanted to get up and watch him. I tried my best but I couldn't wake that kid up 😂. He said something later about how he didn't know Quinn opened his gifts, and I told him I tried to wake him up but he wouldn't have it.

Quinn had an interesting birthday wish list, but he wanted an electric dirt bike most of all. His other asks were Nike socks, an army outfit, a snorkel set, and kinetic sand, most of which he got. I told him he had to open his gifts in order of smallest to biggest, which just happened to align with the excitement level of each. 

Who gets this excited over socks? 😂

He opened his helmet and I tried to trick him in to thinking we just got it for him to wear on his bike, but he didn't really believe me 

We had his dirt bike hidden in Philip's office. He walked downstairs, took one look at it, and ran over to hug me, and then to hug Philip. He really is super fun to watch open gifts 🥰

Quinn was adamant about having his birthday party on his actual birthday, so he had to wait until the evening, since it was on a Friday.   He tells me 6 7 is old now, but that didn't stop him from wanting a 6 7 themed party. Being 6 turning 7 during this weird phase of obsessing over a totally random number seems like the coolest coincidence, and should be commemorated. I think one or a couple of his friends planted the seed that maybe it wasn't cool, so he wavered a bit, but he didn't give me any other ideas, so we went with it anyway. He recently declared that he doesn't like Spiderman anymore (which broke a tiny piece of my heart), so we didn't really have a back up. I know this stage of middle childhood brings a new sense of self awareness, but I was a bit sad about the development. I don't miss the baby phase, but I don't want my babies to grow up too quickly either ☹️. Superheroes, especially Spiderman, were such a huge part of his identity for so long, it was bittersweet hearing him say he's moved on. 

I made a banner for the wall and my text was terrible 🤣. Oh well, maybe next year's will be better. He didn't even really care about it anyway. Actually, he didn't even care about his party because all he wanted to do was ride his dirt bike 🙄. Next time, he isn't getting his big gift until the end of his party. 

He specifically requested I make Dirt Cake, and then he never even ate any of it 🙄🙄🙄

I spent entirely too much time and tape on making this blind vending machine. You pick a string to cut and then lift the bottom flap to see what you go. It had full size boxes of theater candy in it. 

It was pretty cool, but I won't do it again 😂

He got even more Nike socks, and he was just as excited as the first time 😂.

I also captured good faces for silly string and kinetic sand 

We sent a video to Kiki to show her he was mixing the sand colors because she reallly doesn't like that and I'm a bad friend 😂

Nana and Juju got Quinn a rolly poly cage, which was big of Nana because she hates bugs so much 😂. We got it all set up the day after his birthday. 

To finish out Quinn's birthday weekend celebration, we took another trip to Tanger Outlets so he could spend some of the money he got for his birthday. He also wanted to play at Planet Bounce again, but we didn't realize their hours were limited and got there too late in the day.  To try to lessen the disappointment, we hit up the arcade at the mall on the way home, but that's didn't fair very well, either. I dislike that place very much because of the noise level, but some of the games seemed kinda fun to me. Quinn was dissatisfied though. Philip and I told him we were sorry things didn't work out how we wanted them to, but we tried to make it fun for him anyway. He was a little grumpy but life goes on 😂.

      

Quinn didn't like the shirt I got for his birthday, but Ash did, so he got to pretend to be a big kid. It says "I was 6, now I'm 7." 

The rest of July was filled with lots and lots of pool days. In fact, we went five days in a row one week, and our streak was only spoiled because of the terrible air quality. Quinn was so excited because Lincoln came with us a few times and that gave him the confidence to try going down the slide. He was on the cusp of being 48" tall, which I think was really about 47.5, but most of the life guards allowed it. When one denied him, he was too embarrassed to try again for a while. I kinda wish they would've been consistent, and I would've been okay with whichever way they went. One of them finally told him to go get measured on the wall, which had been marked with a piece of tape. I guess that's the final word, and according to it, he was tall enough. Once he had that affirmation, he was secure enough to tell them he had done so and he could go. 

Buncha goobers

We stopped at the park after the pool. We tried really hard to get a good pic, but this is as good as it gets 🫠 

Ash had a big boy moment, too, when he learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. I had been telling him for a while that I thought he would be able to, we just needed to take them off for him to practice. He would always remind me at extremely inconvenient times, but we finally got around to doing it. He and Quinn are so different when it comes to persistence. Ash didn't get it right away, despite being a speed demon on his balance bike, but he kept on trying! He gained confidence too fast and was annoyingly insistent that I let go of him before he was balanced 🤦🏻‍♀️. After about thirty minutes, he got it down and was ready to zoom around!

He had lots of help figuring it out 😆

🚴🏻‍♂️

We took the boys over to the walking trail in Hannibal so that they could ride the loop

Taking a break to look at the river 🙂

Our last activity of the month, before the beach, which will have it's own post, was also our last activity ever at the Center for Children and Families 😭. I have lots of feelings about their closing, but I'm going to keep it brief. We've been going to Playgroup there since Quinn was born. I ran playgroup for the first year of his life, but when I left to stay home with him, we were still regulars. It was a part of our weekly routine for years, and even though this would have been our last with Ash going to Pre-K in the fall, I wasn't ready for it to end so abruptly. The center closing was a huge loss to the staff with their jobs, and to the community with their home visitation program and family events it hosted. While I hope that someone else takes over the grant and opens another center, it will never be the same, and for that I am truly sad. 

 

We had a beekeeper as a guest speaker for our last playgroup

🍯🐝