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!