Hey friends! It’s a little late but I thought it still was a good a time as any to share about our stay-cation we went on in September! Each year we typically go on one week long vacation as a family. We usually will have one or two other shorter vacations with extended family as well. This year we went to Lake George, NY for a weekend for my father-in-law’s 60th birthday. But because money is tight this year (thanks inflation!) so we decided we were going to do a stay-cation instead of going away for a week together as a family. We were planning on going to Lake George for a week just us as a family but decided to stay home and vacation from our home instead!
We had so much fun too! We live on the East Coast so there are plenty of fun things to do within driving distance so we decided to make the most of the week. We particularly liked this plan because we knew the kids would sleep well in their own beds at night and we knew we could relax best in our own house as well. The one downside is that it doesn’t feel quite as much like a vacation when you are cleaning up your own kitchen after dinner as it does even when you’re cleaning up a rental kitchen (haha!). Nonetheless we had a really great week.
We eased into the week and stayed home the first weekend. I believe we had a church picnic at our church that Sunday. The whole weekend I had just started trying to bake with my sourdough starter. It was slow going but I had a lot of fun. I didn’t take many pictures but I do remember I baked a few sourdough discard recipes. I did attempt a loaf of sourdough bread that didn’t turn out but it was fun trying!
On Tuesday we decided to take a day trip to the beach! It was a really fun time. The drive was about two hours and everyone did pretty well on the drive.
We enjoyed the beach for a while. It was the most perfect weather. It was in the low 80s and pretty breezy. On this day we went for a walk on the boardwalk and realized that there was a really fun aquarium that we wanted to go to but unfortunately it was getting late. Fortunately we wanted to come back another day so we made plans to come back on Thursday and to come to the aquarium first before heading to the beach.
So that’s what we did and headed home for the day. Unfortunately we left too late and hit a ton of traffic on the way home. It was definitely not ideal but everyone handled it pretty well thankfully.
The next day we wanted to have a more low-key day so we decided to go hiking in our hometown! This hiking trail is part of the Appalachian Trail and has this really fun boardwalk that you walk on this part of it. It was a shorter hike, but we all enjoyed our time hiking together.
And the next day we headed out to the beach again! First stop as I mentioned earlier was the aquarium!
The boys really enjoyed their time at the aquarium. This aquarium was really cool and had sharks and huge deep sea fish. They also had an exhibit where they fed the penguins and you could watch. We actually got lucky and showed up just as they were starting. It was actually really fun and I learned a lot about penguins too.
It was a smaller aquarium so we only stayed for an hour or so and headed out to the beach! We also learned that you could come back to the aquarium whenever you wanted throughout the day. We didn’t end up doing that this day but I was thinking how it would have been a really nice thing to be able to do in the middle of the summer because the aquarium is air conditioned. It would be nice to just take a stroll in there to cool off.
So we headed out to the beach for the second day and had another really fun time. This day was a little cooler but not too cold to not be able to enjoy ourselves still. Melly in particular had a lot of fun. Anytime we took our eyes off of her for even just a minute, she tried to crawl over to the water as fast as she could. She absolutely loved the water. It was so fun to see!
The next day was another really fun day because we headed to Legoland! I had not heard about Legoland that much before this but knew I wanted it to be apart of our vacation week because I knew the boys would have so much fun. And they really did! It was honestly a blast for Tommy and I to watch and see how much fun they had too.
We spent the whole day here and had so much fun. The boys were able to ride just about every ride because it was really geared more toward younger kids, which I thought was really cool. They even had a nursing room with rocking chair where I was able to nurse Melly. It was definitely a really fun time and I highly recommend if you are ever able to go to a Legoland.
Thanks for being here friends and following along to what our little family is up to. I’m hoping to share more in 2024!
