The Dail Family: Holden Beach 2012...Our own Pirate Adventure

Well this year I got Josh to take off a few days so that we could head down to Holden Beach. I love the beach, just love it. Josh on the other hand is not a fan of the beach. Luckily now that Garrett is here he ~~tolerates~~ enjoys it more since he can play on the beach. My idea of a perfect day at the beach is a chair, a good book, some good music, beer and a few snacks while the wind is flowing. Vacation is fun since you don't feel guilty about having a beer at lunch. I love that!
We came down on Thursday afternoon and stayed through Monday afternoon. At Holden Beach our cottage is on the beach and with a 3 year old it makes such a difference. You can run down to the beach for 2 minutes or stay for 2 hours and all of your "stuff" is right there at the house, including a bathroom. It makes a HUGE difference with the little ones. Also there isn't much to do at Holden except beach and I love that. I think there are two restaurants and they do have a water slide. So lots of family time.
So I was BEYOND excited to get down for some rest & relaxation...then I learned never to get too excited about things and get your hopes up because most of the time it doesn't work out like it's supposed to in your head.
Thursday we played on the beach some, but Garrett was moody. He didn't nap on the way down (that was one of the things I had in my mind. G was going to take an awesome nap on the way down so that we could have so much fun...). The positive to this is that we knew he would CRASH when he finally went to sleep. This was the first year we didn't have to travel with a bed rail or pack and play. It was nice. We took turns sleeping in his room. Thursday was my night. G is not a good nap sleeper, but gets 5 gold stars for sleeping during the night. He usually does great. WELL Thursday night we got maybe 5 hours of sleep. He would wake up and cry for no reason and then back to sleep for a few minutes. Just as I was about to fall back asleep every time I would hear him cry again. I was sooo ill. He told me that he wanted to go home that he didn't like it there. UGH. I didn't know where any of this was coming from. Luckily Josh was in another room so he got a good night sleep and we all weren't sleep deprived.
Friday my parents came up to spend the rest of the time with us. Garrett loves spending time with all of his grandparents, so I knew that would lift his spirits and whatever was going on with him would go away. Ha. Nope. Mr. Moody still hung around. We took his temperature and he had a fever! I felt so awful. I just thought he was being a 3 year old, and he was sick. Mom of the Year award for me! About 6:00pm he started crying again about not feeling good and was pulling his ear. He would cry every 5 minutes. This is not like Garrett. So we knew we needed to go to the doctor. Going back and forth about calling it was 7:15pm when we called and they closed at 8:00. We were at least 45 minutes away. So we waited until the morning and went at 8am. In case you are ever in the Wilmington/Leland area we went to Waterford Urgent Care and it was so nice! Our pediatrician office takes at least 2 hours when we have to go for a sick visit. UGH. So we went in knowing that it could take some time. We were in and out within 30 min and the staff was SO NICE! So refreshing. Turns out G had an ear infection. Poor guy. Garrett is allergic to one antibiotic and of course guess who didn't wright it down (again, Mother of the Year award). So the doctor asked a few questions and prescribed a medication. We went over to Rite Aid and got the prescription filled. There was a creepy man in front of me complaining that his nose spray didn't work. So the pharmacist was spraying it showing it did work. We got our antibiotics and headed out to the car to administer that and Advil. While we were sitting there Josh said "Lock your doors" and I looked up to find out why and when I did the passenger door opened (Josh was in the back with G entertaining him). I screamed "GET OUT OF MY CAR". The guy slammed the door and I locked it. He then tried talking to me saying he thought it was his wife waiting. I had the doors locked at this point and just yelled to him to go away. I really think he wasn't trying to get into our car, but thought it was his. It was scary and with little sleep, he caught my bad side.
Well we decided to call Target where we normally get our medications filled and double check to see if he was allergic to the meds we just administered....YES that was the one he was allergic to. Of course it is. SO we had to go back to the doctor and get another antibiotic. It was a long morning and I was ready for my beer by lunch!
Here is a picture of G before meds:

This is before the doctor. Lots of cuddling (the only good thing about being sick).
Look how pitiful he looks :-(

This was after his medication had kicked in. Feeling MUCH better!

After his medications kicked in we had two GREAT days at the beach. We got to have ice cream (super yummy), and play on the beach and then we tried to go to the water slide...closed. Oh well, next year!
Here are some pictures (out of order) from our trip and I think I got trigger happy: