Vacation

I have been extremely bad about writing in recent weeks.  It seems that the long days of summer have left me with little time to sit down and write.  Thank you for your loyalty in reading and your patience with my slackness.

Samuel seems to be enjoying his summer vacation.  There have been a couple of times that he has made a comment "let's go school," but for the most part he has easily adjusted to the idea of a summer break.  Last week, April and I took vacation from work.  We were originally planning a trip to Atlanta, but as I mentioned in a previous post we decided this would not be best for Samuel.  Instead we stayed closer to home and did several activities.  Our first day off we made a trip to Myrtle Beach where we visited Myrtle Waves water park.  Samuel had a wonderful time!  He enjoyed the water slides in the kids section, the lazy river, and all the pools (especially the wave pool).  Playing in the water seems to make him very happy. Hopefully next summer we can get him swimming lessons.

Last week was also Vacation Bible School at our church.  We were able to go Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights.  Samuel was in the Pre-K class with six other children and I had the opportunity to stay with him as the class went to the various events.  I thought Samuel handled this really well.  A good thing about the format this year was that they went to the various stations in the same order every night.  This is beneficial to Samuel who loves routines.  By the second night he knew where the class would go from session to session. Unfortunately, the last session involved going to the craft room.  On the first night, he was getting tired by this point and starting to get fussy.  I decided to take him home, however there was only 30 minutes left for the night and Cameron was in another class.  Instead of going home and coming right back, I took him to the playground which Samuel thoroughly enjoyed.  However, that also meant that it was now part of his routine.  The next two nights the exact same order of events occurred, with us skipping crafts to visit the swings instead.

At the end of the week, we spent a few days with my brother and his family in Greensboro.  I was concerned with how Samuel would do spending the night in a new place.  However, he handled the change of scenery very well, going straight to sleep every night.  On Thursday, both families visited the NC Zoo in Asheboro.  The first exhibit we saw were the polar bears.  It was fascinating seeing this massive animal swim back and forth with just a mere sheet of glass between us.  While Samuel was captivated seeing the polar bear, other exhibits became somewhat of a letdown for him.  He kept saying, "see elephants" but they were on the other side of the park in Africa.  Therefore, Samuel hopped in the stroller and took a nap. When he awoke, he largely chose to spend the rest of the day in the stroller.  However, several hours later he was glad to see the elephants.  He also enjoyed the trolley ride back to North America at the end of the day.    

The next day, we visited Pilate Mountain State Park.  We did some hiking around the top of the mountain, which is an absolutely breathtaking view.  Samuel didn't mind being there, he just did not want to walk.  I ended up holding him the entire hike, which had to make me a little stronger.  Samuel had his moments on our vacation, but all-in-all I think he did pretty well.  Considering we did not know what to expect going into it, we were definitely satisfied.

I won't make any promises, but I will try to write sooner between the next post then what I did since the last one.  Thank you for being a loyal reader and all your support.  It means a great deal to us all!

Till next time!
Brian