Summer flashback: Watercolor

We visited Watercolor in October 2010 for the wedding of our good friends, Justin and Sarah, and we had a super great time. The weather was great, we rented a great house with friends ... what could be better? Oh, adding kids to the mix? The jury is still out.

Our other good friends, the Dreilings, invited us to plan a trip with Justin and Sarah and our kids for an extra long weekend. Their kids were finally old enough where they were ready to tackle traveling by plain, train and automobile and Justin and Sarah and their daughter are seasoned travelers, visiting family all over the country on a pretty regular basis. Us? Novices. Small baby. Sure - what could go wrong???

Well, nothing went WRONG, per se, but I will say that a family beach vacation with a newly crawling baby who still takes 2 naps a day (and prefers to do it in her bed thanksverymuch) isn't the best vacation, but we did have a good time and are glad we went. And, the better news? If we go back, we won't be doing that again!

You can see my travel tips here, but our flights were actually as good as possible, I think. Minus one incident of me using my angry face with Ellen in the Houston airport after we woke up at 3:30am and she was running around like a maniac, we all arrived in one piece.

Sarah sourced us a great house at the Watercolor resort on VRBO and it was perfect for our group - nice kitchen, separate bedrooms and bathrooms for every family, close to everything. A+++.

We spent most/all of our first afternoon settling into the house and making trips to Walmart / grocery / liquor store (very.important) and we cooked most of our meals at home, as eating out with the WHOLE group was pretty ill-advised. Our first morning we did brave breakfast at Great Southern and it was just the tasty gut bomb we all needed before taking off our cover-ups and playing on the beach (???).

Though I am pretty regimented with Georgia's schedule at home, I was prepared to nap her on the go and not hold back the group. Turns out, when you get a child used to a set schedule for 10 months, that's all they want. She screamed and screamed and screamed our first morning at the beach and it was highly unpleasant, so we kind of traded off G and E duty for the rest of the weekend to help keep the peace.

The co-eds next to us on the beach asked, Are your husbands frat guys?? Oh, yes. How could you tell?

Sweet Ellie. Such a fun, adventurous age - both recalled fond memories of Ellen at that age, and made me scared that it is right around the corner for Georgia.

G hanging in the shade. Also, forgot to mention that she got sick right before we left - we brought the breathing machine and really needed it - which perhaps contributed to her mood.

Obligatory "baby on the beach" pic before ScreamFest started. I'm sure the co-eds loved us.

Our girls were not super fans of the beach and, while Grant could have played with trucks and sand for a long time, I don't think Lucy loved it either and we ended up at the pool most of the time. The pool is nice, family friendly and worked just fine. Truth be told - I love walking on the beach and looking at the beach, but I'm not a huge fan of sand EVERYWHERE. Guess they come by it naturally.

Chillin' in the pool. Get this girl a floaty and a noodle and she's happy for hours.

Despite the fact that we spent about 3% of our vacation at the beach, I took a lot of pictures to prove we were there.

Lucy and Ellen are the best of friends / worst of enemies, but actually did great all week considering the amount of togetherness.

The walk from our house to the pool / beach access was really only about 2 blocks, but the kids were tired from so much swimming and there was So. Much. Gear, that the group wisely decided to rent bikes and kid trailers for most of the remainder of our trip. G and I just walked, but we were on a different schedule most of the time, so it worked great.

Dads on bikes. Quite a bit different than our trip in 2010.

We brought 3 toys for G and they were in heavy rotation.

We were there over Labor Day weekend, so the resort had this fun kid fest. It was hot as blazes, but was a good excuse for ice cream?

Ellen had never played Limbo before - took it very seriously. Look at that form! (I think she actually got out on this round - didn't put her head back. Tough to explain that rule!)

My buddy, Grant

We tried to get some family pics early one morning - moderately successful.

And rounded out the weekend with more pictures. I guess it was my goal to take a ton of pictures to document that we were there because 1) the girls will never remember it and 2) I was in kind of a sleep-deprived daze myself.

Surf baby

Finally - finally! - a nap, like 2/3rds of our way through the trip. Non-sleeping children were the nemesis of the week.

Tried for some good kid pics our last night there. So sweet.

Me, encouraging danger.

I probably caught this cute smirk because I was talking about poop. Whatever it takes.

Thanks for cooperating, Ellen!

Will we do it again? Yes, I hope so. It was great fun being in the house with friends and we had one adult night out that was much needed. Truth be told, our kids were pretty young compared to the other families at the resort - it seems like when your kids can ride bikes, that is the right age for family vaca - but, all of our schedules will just get harder to work with, so I'm glad we were invited (suckered) to go.