Our First Vacation!!!!!

We left the house at 9:30am. Between a few snacks, a nap and a little Barney, we made it to Lexington around noon to make a pit stop at one of my triplet-mommy friend's house! We played and had lunch, then hit the road again. Another nap and a little more Barney and we were there! We made the habitual stop at Walmart to get our last minute supplies and made it down to the lake by 5:30...just in time for it to start DOWNPOURING. We weren't exactly sure where we were staying at that point....we knew it was either the houseboat or our family friend's house. I took the kids to the marina to eat dinner, and Josh was in charge of prepping the boat and unloading the car. The rain didn't slow down AT ALL....and just about the time Josh had everything unloaded from the car and down to the boat (and all his layers of clothing were soaked), he talked to our friend's daughter, and she said we were going to be staying at the house. So then he got to unload everything off the boat and reload it back into the car. UGH! (probably should have checked where we were staying before unloading everything! Definitely made note of that for next vacation!) Meanwhile, the babies finished eating and I was struggling to entertain 3 kids who'd been in carseats, then high chairs and back into their strollers for the past 4 hours. NOT FUN! I ordered dessert, we read (and fought over) books, we sang "5 little monkeys" ...on repeat....i was out of tricks! We finally loaded back into the car and up to the house in time to set up the pack and plays and go to bed. I set up everything as close to how it is at home for them, and shortly after putting them to bed, Avery and Colby were OUT! Zach on the other hand was SCREAMING HYSTERICALLY for about a half hour before I determined he wouldn't just lay down and go to sleep based on how he was behaving so I went and got him. After 2 hours of trying to get him back to bed, by 11:30, we just layed him down and said good night. He finally fell asleep.....and then woke up screaming hysterically again at 5:30am. I figured he would snuggle up with me and go back to sleep in our bed, but nope, he was up for the day. And on the other hand, the other 2 slept until about 8:30!
We ate a quick breakfast and ventured down to the boat. Here went nothing! The first boat ride wasn't great. But not nearly as bad at Brookville Lake had been. Avery and Zach still didn't love it, but weren't hysterical either. (And Colby still liked it =) ) We went out and dropped the anchor to take a swim. Zach had fallen asleep, so we both jumped in with the other two. The water was the perfect temperature, and they LOVED IT! By the time we made it back to the marina, back to the house, and ate lunch, it was 12:30 (normal nap time starts at 11), so once we got them in bed, they crashed hard...well Avery and Colby did. Zach cried for a while...but finally napped a little too. (at this point he was very hoarse and sounded pathetic when he cried!) After they woke back up we took the boat out again. This time it was a great success! We figured out a perfect seating arrangement to keep everyone safe...took along cheese balls for a snack (and got orange finger prints all over grandpa's boat)...and I sang songs. Cheese balls and songs were our keys for successful boat rides for the rest of the trip! This time when we stopped to swim, Zach got to participate too! Still didn't love it, but did think it was fun to splash and kick his feet! (It wasn't until the next day, we realized that he LOVED to be thrown up in the air out of the water to "jump") Saturday night went a lot better sleeping wise for little Zachy. He still didn't like where he was sleeping, but was too tired to fight it!
The next few days we followed the schedule of breakfast~boat~nap~lunch~boat~nap~dinner~boat~bed. We decided we could definitely get used to that routine!
On Sunday afternoon we moved to the houseboat which opened up a lot more freedom for the babies. They couldn't be outside un supervised, but the inside was pretty much baby proofed and they could run around and explore and play. We had to do a pack and play puzzle to fit them in the bedroom, but the close quarters seemed to be a lot more acceptable to Zach, and there wasn't much complaint at bed time or naps!
On Monday we woke up to rain. No fun! We hung out on the houseboat, and once it cleared up, took a family trip into the marina to get ice. We didn't even get out of neutral, but Colby managed to come back with a HUGE egg and bruise on his head (his second head/face injury of the trip!). Poor guy's head is always running into things! On Monday afternoon, we went and had a triplet playdate with my friend (from cincinnati) who was also down there on vacation! They were staying at a huge house on the lake that was only a 5 minute boat ride away from where we were! It was an awesome house, but we had to climb 83 steps to get up to it from the boat! YIKES! We had so much fun playing with her family! Then Monday night, Josh's cousin, who also was down there on vacation, came over and babysat the babies so we could go out to celebrate our 5 year anniversary! (which was friday the 9th...which we spent driving down and ended up soaking wet!) We took the wave runner out and rode over to another marina to hang out! We had a great time...and so did the babies!
Tuesday, we woke up to rain again, but not much this time! We went on one last boatride and for one last swim before we packed up to come home. We ended up leaving around 3:30, stopped for dinner at Crackle Barrel, and made it home by 9. The kiddos definitely like stopping for a break in the middle better, but still did great in the car.
While I was not feeling relaxed and rejuvenated like i used to after coming home from a vacation, we had an AWESOME time and can't wait to do it again!
Blogger isn't working to upload my pictures today, so i attached the link for the photo book i made last night for you to enjoy instead!
(and I'll let josh edit/add anything i missed...so check back for the changes!)

Vacation Photo Book: http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/projectshareewelcome/l=9826479007/p=428151279210198894/g=42917860/cobrandOid=1000/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/otsc=SYE/otsi=SPBKlink/

Prologue to Our First Vacation

First let me back track...my last post didn't fully explain our adventures enough. We had been planning a vacation to Norris Lake in Tennessee...but weren't sure how the kids would do on a boat or in the water. We have the water table that they love and our little swimming pool is usually a hit...but big water is a different story. We bought them life jackets a few weeks prior, and they tried them on, and cried when we took them off...so that was a good start we thought! We decided to do a trial run a little closer to home to see how it would go...and then finalize our plans for vacation. So we went out for the afternoon to Brookville Lake in Indiana (just a little over an hour away) to go for a boatride and swim. We got their lifejackets on....everyone was happy...we put them in the boat....everyone was still happy....the boat turned on and we started to move....it went WAY downhill. Let me start with the positive, Colby loved it. He chilled on Josh's lap and enjoyed the ride. Avery and Zach HATED it. I'm not sure if hate is even a strong enough word. They were screaming, crying and inconsolable. There were tears and snot everywhere. At one point, I thought Avery was going to fall asleep leaning over a bucket, because those were the only 5 minutes she wasn't wailing. Finally (what felt like 3 hours later) we threw in the anchor and decided we'd already made them really mad, so it couldn't get much worse if they didn't like the water either, so we gave it a try. Again, Colby loved it. He splashed and then found out he could lay back on the flap of his lifejacket and just hang out. Avery got it next, she had fun too. Finally she calmed down and also had fun splashing and lounging in daddy's arms. Then, I got in with Zach. He wasn't a huge fan. He wasn't screaming hysterically like he was on the boat, but he never really got into it either. In my head, the worst part was that we still had to go on another boat ride to get back to the dock, so even if they were happy then, we were still going to have another 3 hours of melt down (really 30 minutes or so) on the way back in....but luckily they didn't hate it quite as much on the way back.
After cancelling, then un-cancelling our vacation, we decided we'd go forth with it and just go open minded, and know that we didn't have to stay, and if we were all miserable we'd just pack up and come home.
We did a few more test runs at pools the week before our trip, and we learned our real water bug is Avery....and that Zach still isn't a big fan. But at least we tried!
So on July 9th, we packed up everyone and all our stuff (even after all our equipment needed for 3 15 month olds, we had extra room in the car!!) and headed to Tennessee!