Beach Vacation!

The week leading up to Thanksgiving we were graciously blessed with a vacation trip to Myrtle Beach!  My family always vacationed at the beach in the summer when I was growing up so a cold, wintry beach vacation is a little foreign to me.  Matt's family vacationed at the Outer Banks every Thanksgiving and fished on the beach in the cold so he loves this kind of vacation.  Actually the weather this week was perfect - 70's all week long and sunny!
We stayed in a house in Ocean Lakes and enjoyed a very slow pace...you can't really have a fast pace when you have 3 kids 3 and under!  Corrie and Avery loved walking on the beach collecting shells, seeing crabs, and chasing seagulls.  We drove our Chick-Fil-A golf cart around the campground feeding ducks and geese, and one goose bit Corrie's finger because she wasn't feeding him fast enough. :)  She screamed, threw the bread down, and ran to the golf cart.  Oh, it was hilarious!  Ocean Lakes has an indoor pool that we all played in together a few days.  One of my friends gave me a "Watertot" which is like a Baby Bjorn made of wet-suit material so I could wear Hudson in the water and still have my hands free.  We'll definitely use it this coming summer again because he loved being in the water.
On the days we went out, we visited Ripley's Aquarium, Christmas shopped, walked on a pier, and ate really well!  I ate crab legs at a seafood buffet one night and Avery, who is our porker, kept opening her mouth saying, "Aaa! Aaa!" because she wanted some of them.  She ended up eating half of my crab legs!  She continually surprises us and makes us laugh with her daredevil personality.
Corrie has been to the beach before with us, but didn't remember much.  She loved finding shells on the beach and seeing the fish at the aquarium.  Avery was amazed at the ocean.  We could see the ocean from our bedrooms and every morning I would open the blinds and she would say, "Whoa!  Ocean!" (through her passy of course). :)  Vacationing at the beach is very different with children - not much sitting on the beach with a book - but it's also different because you see the wonder of what God created through their eyes.  I was reminded all week long about God speaking to Job:
"He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea." Job 9:7-9
"Who shut up the seas behind doors when it burst forth from the womb?" Job 38:8
and in Psalms:
"The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, Lord, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils." Psalm 18:15
"He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; He puts the deep into storehouses." Psalm 33:7
"Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea - the Lord on high is mighty." Psalm 93:4
What a mighty God we serve!