The Nashvegas Clores: Family Vacation 2012

We decided to do a family vacation this year......since we've been selfish and have only taken "John and Sarah" vacations so far. :) Harv has been so young up until this year, and we felt he wouldn't even notice if we didn't do an official family vacation. And, he hasn't noticed. The odds of us being able to leave him again while we go on vacation without him noticing: slim to none.

For our first "official" family vacation, we decided to go to the beach. Beach vacations are not really John's style (as he would rather go and explore a new city, rather than just go sit on the beach), but they're so my style. I really just want to go and sit........and sit some more.........and then eat and sit again. Now THAT'S a vacation. So we compromised. We went to Madeira Beach, FL (near St Pete) so I could be at the beach, we were close enough to Tampa so we could go to the Ray's stadium and cross another stadium off the 'ole list, and we were only a couple of hours away from Disney for big Harv. Something for everyone! John's parents also came along with us and were a huge help. It was so fun to be able to do all of this together.

Something I probably should have realized------vacation with children is like working, just in a different location. They still needed to eat (gah, the nerve!) and sleep, and nap, and play, and throw fits and need to be disciplined, and stay on some kind of schedule, even though we were AT THE BEACH! Didn't they get the memo that we're supposed to layout and relax, and eat and relax, and have no schedule??? And did I mention RELAX? Going to the pool and the beach with these guys was the opposite of relaxing. Making sure they didn't drown, float away, walk away, eat too much sand (yup I allowed them to eat some. Totally impossible to keep Charlie from sampling it every.single.day), it was a full time job. And don;t even get me started on how much crap we had to take to the beach everyday. Wow.

But, so totally worth every single second of it. They loved it so much, and that is why people do family vacations every year. And, this further solidifies our plan to do a week family vacation, and then a weekend/week long mommy and daddy vacation every year. We need to unwind sometime too.

Here are just a *few* photos from our vacation. I'll do another post soon with our Disney photos. Don't want to totally overload the internet all in one day. :)