Summer Vacation With a BANG!
This year we took my niece and nephew Hollie and Dylan with us on our Summer Vacation. They spent the night on Friday and we left early Saturday June 5th to California! 🙂
On the way we spotted this truck-o-oranges. They looked soooo tasty! 😛
We made really good time until we got about what should have been 30 min. away from our hotel. It took us an additional hour to get there. Traffic was horrible on the freeways. 🙁When we did arrive to the Hampton Inn & Suites in Garden Grove (our new fave hotel) we unloaded as fast as we could so we could hustle over to Huntington Beach!
The kids were ecstatic!! Can you tell how they all rushed right into the FREEEZING cold water!?! LOL!!Dylan kept saying how he hadn’t been to the ocean since he lived in Georgia. I think that was about 7 years ago for him.
Before we left on vacation we made our traditional count down chain to help with the …”When are we going on vacation?” question from the kids. All Alayna kept saying was, “When all the papers are gone….THEN we go to the beach..right Mommy?” It was very cute how badly she wanted to go to the beach! 🙂
It was overcast, windy, and looking a little stormy. The waves were bigger than Jared and I have ever seen there. They were plowing the kids right over!
But that is all apart of the fun.
As much as Alayna wanted to go to the beach. She really just wanted to play in the sand. She wasn’t a fan of the actual water…LOL! She stayed nice and close to me where it was dry.
Everyone had a great time for the 1st hour. They had come out of the water to see the sand castle Laney and Dad had made and headed back into the ocean. Everyone except Eli that is. Somehow he didn’t see everyone go back in and he walked down the beach looking for Dad and the other kids. However, we didn’t know that he had simply walked too far down the beach.Jared had come out of the water and asked me where Eli was. I said he was with you..I’ve been watching Alayna. Panic set in. We start looking everywhere! Our first thought of course was he’s drown in the Pacific. Jared rushed back into the water looking for him (and loses his wedding ring in the process). Other families see that I’m really freaking out and ask what he looks like, what color swim trunks he has on ect.
Jared couldn’t find him out in the water so we hurry over to the life guard tower and notify them Eli is missing. They call other towers, I see another life guard enter the water to search for Eli, other families are checking back in with me letting me know they’ve looked but weren’t able to find him either.A million scenarios have played through my mind at this point. I’m of course crying and praying my heart out and trying to keep track of the 4 other kids while Jared is trying to get information from the life guards. Then 20 minutes later we FINALLY hear back that he’s been found and he’s pretty far down the beach. They put him in a Beach Cruiser (a highlight for Eli :P) and drove him back to where we were anxiously waiting for him.
We got him back and squeezed that kid soooooo tight!
After tons of hugs and kisses we asked him what happened and he said that he got lost and another mom saw that he looked concerned (I think he was crying) and asked him if he was lost. He said he was and her daughters took him to the life guard station and that was that.
We are so thankful he was returned safe and sound! The other families that helped us look for him were amazing and supportive and extremely appreciated. God puts people in your path for a reason. He did that day for sure!
Needless to say we immediately packed everything up and left. We’d had enough of the beach that day…LOL!! (much to Alayna’s disappointment)
