Bryan and I packed up our children and headed to Atlantic City, New Jersey home of the board walk and all the streets that the Monopoly game is named after. Yes, we went down all the streets on the game, it makes sense to us now why some of the places are worth more then others after driving down them. I should have been more 'with it' and taken pictures of the different streets, but alas I am a mother of 4 and we were on a weekend trip that was 12 hrs. each way. We were in the City for a Conference, not gambling or shopping. Atlantic City reminded us of Las Vegas (though we have never been) only smaller and not that clean. It was interesting how one street would have gorgeous houses on it and the next dumpy unkept homes. There was a huge contrast. The conference we went to was very small and the people wonderfully friendly. We even came home with a few bags of new and used clothing and tons of food. We were pretty much the only white people, and I have to admit I was a little nervous about that as I really never hang around black people. We were completely put at ease and felt so comfortable with the Bible believing, Amen and Hallelujah saying folks of a small Baptist church in a small version of a 'Sin City'. The Sunday after our vacation, I was really missing their Amens and Hallelujahs and caught myself thinking it throughout the service! It really is such a blessing to step outside our 'traditional' idea of church and our own denomination or those like it and see how others serve and worship the same God. We didn't agree with all that was said that weekend, but we did come away with a better understanding of how God can work in different people and a greater desire to Serve.
The above picture was during our lunch stop on the way to Atlantic City. We got of the highway and drove around looking for a park for the kids (and Bryan and I) to stretch our legs and enjoy a picnic lunch. We ended up at a playground that was built for handicapped children and children in wheel chairs. Since there was no one there we hoped they wouldn't mind us playing on it. The girls had so much fun running around.We were thinking about driving through the night on the way down but around 11 pm the girls started waking up and getting fussy. We decided to pull over and get a hotel for the night. I had dressed the girls in pj.'s for the drive and Bryan and I just slept in our clothes, all we took into the hotel was a playpen for Cassia and the travel case with our toothbrushes. The next morning we enjoyed a free breakfast and visited with a bunch of older people who just loved watching us with our our girls. One couple was on their way to see their grandchildren and they said that seeing us made them even more anxious to get to their destination. Another lady shared with us that she has a daughter or granddaughter who wants 12 children, I don't think the lady talking to us was overly excited about it! :-) An older man, just 'had' to have a picture of our family to remember us by, because 'we have such beautiful little girls'! We really enjoyed and are very use to all the comments and smiles that we get, but really it is only 4 not 14 children! Is it the fact that they are all girls and we are still smiling that makes it so odd, or is it really odd for a couple in their right mind to have 4 children and still be smiling! :-) I guess I am just so use to large families that 4 doesn't seem 'large' to me. But anyhow, I enjoy making people smile and if all it takes is 4 beautiful girls, then that is wonderful!
The very first thing our girls wanted to do when we got to the hotel was go SWIMMING!! By all means isn't that the exact reason we drove 12 hrs............ :-) The girls were also thrilled to see that there was NO hot tub, then "mommy, has to go swimming with us" they said! Okay, so the last time we went to a motel with a pool and a hot tub, I hung out in the hot tub while daddy was a good daddy and went in the pool! So this time I did swim! It was hot out and the water wasn't too bad. The floaty thing that Cassia is in was a last min. purchase that I thought was definitely needed.........well, she didn't agree and soon after this picture she was crying and was taken out never to go back in again. She much preferred being held or playing on the deck.
I love pools with steps, then the girls can enjoy the water without hanging on Bryan and I. They take turns swimming with us and sometimes we actually get to swim alone too! I must say, it really will be a wonderful day when our girls learn to swim and not scream the whole time they are in a pool. Not sure the if the screaming will ever end when Daddy is around, cause Daddy loves to make them scream!
Bryan would pretend to be a shark and go underwater swimming towards the girls on the stairs and the girls would scream and jump out of the water, I really thought someone was going to come out to see what we were doing to our children, but it never did happen!
Here is my first 'brown' baby!! And ain't she a cutie! She loved playing on deck, especially when she found the keys!!
Bobbing up and down in the water, the girls really enjoyed this pool and I really enjoyed that no one else was there! I am so anti-social....but really it is so much easier to enjoy a pool and playground, and back yard when no one else is there. I don't have to worry about what other people's kids are doing and my own girls don't sit there staring at the other kids! :-) Bryan says it is because I was homeschooled, but I am really more social then he is! :-)
You can't go to Atlantic City without going on the boardwalk, so away we went and boy did we make a sight! At one point there we were walking down the board walk with 4 little girls. Bryan had 2 of the girls one on either side holding his hand, one of the girls was pushing the empty stroller and I was carrying one (I won't name names, but you could probably take a wild guess and be right) under my arm just a SCREAMING away. She didn't want to sit in the stroller and she didn't want to hold my hand walking, so away we went with a screaming child. At that point I started smiling and remembered way back when Bryan and I were in Florida together for our 5th Anniversary and we would see parents with their screaming kids and look at each other smiling, so thankful we had left our munchkins behind. Of course we thought we were a lot smarter then those parents with screaming kids! Well, now here we were, the parents with the screaming kids and I bet ya anything there were a bunch of parents walking by us looking at each other smiling and saying how glad they were that they left their children behind! :-) I was not going to let a screaming child ruin our day so we kept walking on, our family of 6 with 4 little girls wearing bonnets, it really was a site to behold! :-)
One of the first stops was going to see the ocean! Of course our girls have no idea what the ocean is or the significance of seeing it, but they were just as excited as us! Ah, children.....they can get so excited over something they have no idea about, you just have to make a big deal about it! Again you just have to imagine what we looked like, we are walking down this boardwalk with 4 little girls in tow towards a bar on the beach. This place is not a place you bring kids.........it is a place that you go to get away from your kids! But we are family people, I mean we do have 4 going on 5 children, we must be a little crazy! I think back on all we put our children through on this vacation and really I am so amazed at how well they did and how much fun and the things they still talk about, it is unbelievable all we did in a weekend, and how much we enjoyed it! But anyhow back to the ocean...............
Are we country folk or what?!! (at least we like to think we are, we will find out soon, if we really are) I love this picture and looking at it I can see why we keep getting asked if they are triplets!
Hiking up the dresses (don't worry all had leggings underneath) ready to get our feet wet! It was so pretty I would have loved to stay longer, but we didn't have time to spare.
Victoria and I enjoyed the waves, as you can see in the above and below picture, a wave surprised us and came up a lot higher then we thought it would. Bryan and the other girls are standing quite a bit back and twice a wave went all the way to them.
The water was so warm, we really enjoyed it. There were a lot of people swimming, just not right where we are. I think there might have been a really strong current there, it seemed to us that the lifeguard kept everyone out of this area. We stayed pretty far back so there was no danger for us. It really was amazing how far the waves came.
You can hardly see him, but Bryan is standing in front of the Bally's Casino. He wanted to take a quick look inside as he remembered this casino in a movie he had watched and enjoyed in his younger days. I can't remember what it was called! The girls and I sat on a bench and did some people watching while eating a snack. I had to make sure we didn't drop any crumbs, there were a lot of seagulls that could detect even the smallest bit of food!
We decided to 'treat' the girls and ourselves to some ice cream since it was very hot out. The ice cream store we chose had a sale on their large, 3 scoops for $3. Bryan and I were going to get the 3 scoops and then get each of the girls a small, but the small was over $4. We were trying to be extra special and not cheap out by letting the oldest 3 girls chose their 'own' ice cream. After the hassle of waiting in line, deciding on what kind of ice cream and paying we found a place out of the sun and free from sea gulls to eat our treat. Alicia took one bite and decided she didn't want anymore, so I was eating hers and mine and giving bites to Cassia. Remember they were all 3 scoops of ice cream, thankfully we had insisted that they all be in a dish and not a cone. It was hot out and the ice cream was melting fast. The other 2 girls did a good job eating theirs and I did my best, with Cassia's help to eat 2 dishes. I hate to waste good ice cream, but I am sorry to say that there was quite a bit wasted that day. I discovered that trying to 'treat' kids under 6 is best done by just going to a park and pushing them on a swing, they really don't understand 'special' expensive ice cream!
Our last day in the City the conference had an out door evangelism time, but since it was raining and the area they had chosen was known to have many passing drunkards, we were advised not to take our girls. There were no malls, everything was outdoors and it was pouring rain. So I found an aquarium to go to, but alas so did everyone else with children that were visiting Atlantic City, it was over priced, small and crowded. The girls still enjoyed it and it was something to do for an hour, I just won't tell you what I paid for that hour!
It was neat that you could put your hands in and touch a lot of the creatures, but true to my girls nature I had no worries of their little finger getting bit off, none of their fingers made it into the water. I think Victoria ventured to try but alas her hand just could not touch the water. They did enjoy watching!
Doesn't my baby girl look so sweet and happy here!! Truth be told she cried almost the entire time. I was a rather frazzled mommy by the time we left that place, trying to keep my girls together and calm a crying baby who wanted to run around not sit in a stroller or be held. This was one of those times that I look back on and and really wonder how I did it! :-) But we survived and I most likely will have many more of those times!
Another one of those great opportunities to actually touch the creatures that swim in the ocean, and all my girls did was watch. Then again, I think I prefer it that way, I didn't have to tell them to be carefull! That ends the pictures of our trip. We drove home that day with the intentions of stopping around midnight for a motel. The first place we stopped they wanted a little more then I was willing to pay, same with the second. So we drove on but then the motels started not having any rooms available so we drove on and on. Finally we came to a motel that was not exactly super clean looking but really I had 4 little ones and we just wanted somewhere to sleep for a few hours atleast. They had room available and when asked how many were in my party I dumbly replied with "6" and their reply "you will need 2 rooms then" TWO ROOMS they are 4 girls under 6 year old! There was no way I was going to pay over $200 for a few hours sleep so we kept driving. I learned to say there were only 5 in our pary but still there was no room in the inn! We ended up in Niagara falls and still there were no rooms available. So we decided to just drive the last 4 hours and go home. Amazingly the girls slept very well on the way home, it was BRyan and I how were exahusted. The last 2 hours were the hardest we had to pull over twice, but we finally did make it home and I think it is safe to say we will not atempt an over night drive ever again! We arrived home around 8am Sunday morning and since the girls had had a pretty good sleep I called my mom and dad to pick up the girls and take them to church so that Bryan and I could sleep. It worked out very well and by the evening we were back to normal.
All in all it was a very eventful trip with lots of memories, even more then I wrote and took picures of. It was such a blessing to get away with our family especially due to the unknown that I was pregnant and would be out of it for the whole month of August. It is always so neat to see how God works things and guides our plans. We would have loved to have another vacation this year, like a camping trip in our new trailer that we plan on selling, but with me still not feeling all better and packing and moving it doesn't look like it will work out. Hopefully we can get one more camping trip in after the baby is born and before we sell the trailer. We absolutly love our trailer but due to moving and the extra expenses of living in the country we have decided to sell it and maybe in the future get one again. I think it will be back to tenting for us!
That was a lot of fun to look back on these pictures and remember that fun vacation, I love going away, even if it doesn't go the way I planned! :-)
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