About our Myrtle Beach trip
In September, Mr. FG and I took the girls on a rather last-minute trip to Myrtle Beach. We hadn't been in a couple of years, and Joshua wasn't free due to his college classes, but we decided to just head down with the girls.
Since it was last-minute, we ended up booking a condo we don't usually stay in, in an area we don't usually stay in.
When we got there, we were pretty let-down. The area was kind of sketchy. The condo was kind of sketchy. Plus, the unit wasn't clean or in good repair.
(yuck)
Between missing Joshua, feeling displaced and not at-home because of the condo issues, we were not feeling very happy at this point.
We decided to make the best of it, bought some groceries, went to bed (our mattress was reminiscent of a rock, incidentally), and the next day, we went out to use the many pools this place had.
But we soon discovered the outdoor pools had a weird pink foam in them. And the indoor pool was dirty, plus it was missing parts of the ceiling.
The next morning, we went to chat with the rental agency, and asked to be moved. So, they sent us to another building, but that unit was pretty dirty too. The third unit we were sent to was a little better, but still not great, and it was small. However, the building was better maintained, so we decided to cut our losses and stay.
It was kind of a pain to pack and unpack all of our stuff, and it used up a good part of one of our vacation days.
Suffice it to say, this trip had disappointing lodging issues.
Also, it rained every day.
We didn't see a single sunrise because it rained every morning.
Plus, Lisey missed her cousin dreadfully (normally, her cousin and her family come to the beach when we do.)
And we all missed Joshua (this was our first time vacationing without him!) Some tears might have been shed.
Oh, and I forgot my camera battery charger.
_______________
That is the womp-womp version of the trip. But....we all know that, generally speaking, nothing is all good, and nothing is all bad.
Which means that what I wrote above isn't really the whole story.
Even though our end condo wasn't awesome, we felt a lot better there because we were out of the sketchy section of Myrtle Beach. And since it's the area of beach we're more familiar with, we felt so much more at home.
It did rain every day, but it didn't rain all day. Every day, there were periods of sunshine, and we worked around the weather.
Sonia and Zoe got in plenty of wave-jumping time.
We swam in the pool and sat in the hot tub.
We took walks on the beach with the girls. And Mr. FG and I got in a walk by ourselves on the beach almost every night.
We shopped at store full of purple things, and appropriately enough, I had a purple-ish shirt on, so we documented that.
Lisey fell in love with a super cute stuffed penguin there, almost bought him, slept on it, and came back the next day to buy him. She named him Tate.
Tate has been Lisey's fast friend ever since. 😉
I love this about Lisey...she gets so excited about things like uber-fuzzy penguins.
Lisey and I went to get a pedicure together (our first time!), and the technician thought we were sisters (This was before my nose surgery. I look even more like Lisey now. 😉 ).
We texted with Joshua every day, so we could hear about his work and school adventures.
Joshua got to stay with a friend so that he wasn't by himself the whole week.
Mr. FG and I went out for a date one night, and before we went, we took the girls to a fro-yo place where they each made a creation to eat for dinner.
Because vacation is a time when you can eat fro-yo for dinner.
(At the end of the week, Sonia was like, "I feel like I need to eat something green. A salad, maybe?" Even vacation eating gets old after a while, I guess.)
On our date night, we had an awesome taco dinner, and the guy doing live music there was fantastic. So good.
I got a whole week off of cooking dinner, which was lovely.
The girls got an inordinate amount of joy out of using the soda and snack machines in the condo. 😉
I might not have been able to use my SLR much, but I do have an iPhone, so I got to take pictures and videos.
I don't think either version of this story is the "right" one...they're both true. But it's easy to let the womp-womp version of things take over when stuff goes wrong in life (or on vacation especially!)
I don't think we need to pretend that the bad things aren't there (the condo WAS gross! We did get a lot of rain! We did miss Joshua!), but it's important to not let them take over.
There were unpleasant things, but there were also happy things, and the older I get, the more I learn that it's important to see and expect both.
What a great message as we enter the holiday season...
Glad that y'all were able to make the best of it! We were at the Breakers Resort in July. It was wonderful. We had a two bedroom condo with ocean view and loved it, but I could see how some areas were very sketchy there. Sounds like things worked out for you guys though. 🙂
That pix of Lisey buying the penguin? At first - and second - glance I thought it was you, and wondered why you were doing the purchasing for a teenager who likely carries her own money.
Oh yes, she does! She earned a lot of money this summer working at the ice cream shop, and she'd saved almost all of it.
This is so great. Thanks for writing, Kristen!
A great post, and a great attitude about a less than ideal trip.
We had a similar experience, funny enough, also in Myrtle Beach (I swear, I'm not picking on the place -- I've been there other times and had a blast) when one of my husband's siblings suggested we all meet there as it was about an equal distance for us all to drive. We all planned to spend a long weekend there for Thanksgiving and eat together. A sibling located a motel with kitchenettes in the rooms, which was located on the beach, and had an indoor pool, at off-season prices. Great!
Well, the motel was on the beach. The rooms were small, and while not noticeably un-clean, they were definitely shabby. The kitchenette in each room turned out to be a tiny refrigerator crammed into a narrow cabinet under an even tinier sink, with a mini-microwave and 4-cup coffee maker installed over the sink. The indoor pool was indoors -- but not in the same building, so a long hike to the building where it was located -- and back -- was necessary. A cold front blew in and the weather dropped into the 30's with a stiff breeze. Our rooms were on two different floors, so getting together was always a hike. The rooms all opened to outside walkways, and with the chilly weather, it was uncomfortable every time we left the room to see the others. Instead of cooking meals as we had expected to do in the kitchens in our rooms, we had to eat at overcrowded restaurants all the time. Being much younger than his siblings, my husband was the only one to have kids still at home, and our kids, ages 9 and 12, had to find ways to entertain themselves on a freezing beach.
But, it was the first holiday my husband and his siblings had been together in several decades; their parents were gone, but they never all made it "home" to see the parents at the same time before their parents' deaths, so this was a momentous gathering. One of their uncles cheerfully bundled up and joined our kids to play on the beach. We took lots of pictures. We visited stores and attractions that were open, and as the only kids in our group, our kids got a lot of attention (and offers of treats) from their aunts and uncles. It turned out to be the last holiday for all of the siblings to be together -- in the span of time since that trip, my husband has lost every single one of his siblings to different, sudden deaths. We wouldn't take a moment of that trip back, and now look back on it with some rueful laughter and fond memories.
What a great story! I love it.
wow, what a story!
I love this story -- it is so easy to complain about vacations and what doesn't go as planned. BUT how lucky we are to go on vacation in the first place. When my husband and I first got engaged, I was invited on his family's annual beach trip. Fast forward to said trip, he wasn't able to go, it rained nonstop the entire week, and I felt a little bit of an outsider with my soon-to-be family.
On the brightside: his having to work resulted in a built relationship for employment later down the road when he was laid off from another job, I got to know my new sister-in-law much better (outside of her circle of friends), and I spent time with my future mother-in-law and heard about her dreams for her only sons wedding before she passed away three months later. Everything happens for a reason right...?!
I'm sorry the lodgings were shoddy! I've realized on vacation that you really only need a decently clean/safe room, since we never spend much time at the hotel anyway. But it sounds like y'all had a blast! Ahhh, I wish I were at the beach right now. 🙂
I love this! And you're so right! This week I hurt my leg standing on a chair and putting up Christmas decorations, our teenager car died and my computer went all wonky. I was definitely thinking that I didn't have time or patience for any of it but it's truly not all bad. I have money to order a part for my computer, my leg will heal and we sold the much- used car for parts. It all works out - not always exactly the way you want - but it works out. And I'm definitely going to the purple store next time I'm at Myrtle!
I hope your leg is better soon!
How do you pronounce Lisey's first name? I have been a reader for years.
Very cute pictures. Good job teaching the girls that sometimes you just have to make the BEST of things....
dirty condos are the WORST
yuk
We pronounce it Leesee. Her full name is Elise, but we have just always called her Lisey. 🙂
I too have read your blog for years, and have always pronounced her name as Lis-ee. I never would have guessed it was short for Elise, which is a name I happen to love!
And, I have a fifteen year old daughter who also gets excited about things like a stuffed animal. And I love it!!!!
Thank you, I was also wondering. I have been calling her Li-zay in my head when reading the blog...
It's funny how many different ways people pronounce her nickname!
I wonder if people are pronouncing Sonia differently too...we pronounce it Sone-ya, not Sahn-ya.
Joshua and Zoe are hard to mispronounce, though.
I, too, have been mispronouncing Lisey's name in my head all along. Knowing it is short for Elise makes so much sense!!
I can understand low grade...BUT not dirty..... Wouldn't it be time to call their inspection number?! Just saying
Great story! Thanks for sharing it with us. You have such a lovely family.
I love seeing both sides of the coin because I think often on blogs and social media people present only the A+ version of everything. So thank you!
My family had a vacation like that. We knew it would be rustic - no running water, on a glacier, accessible only by boat.
What we didn't know that there was also no electricity (my parent's cabin had solar, but it'd been cloudy for days so that didn't last long; something the jackass of a manager should have told us, but didn't). Heat provided by a propane heater which only the short-handed staff were supposed to light and couldn't be left on all night. The private toilets were non-flush toilets in a separate space that we had to go outside to reach. The path from the boat dock to the cabins was almost vertical (I'm not exaggerating), a challenge for my mobility-impaired mother.
Plus it was 15 degrees colder than usual and drizzly, so the bare rock was extra slippery and extra challenging.
Like our good FG, I refused to give in. I made a video of family members joking about the place and pointing out the good parts: the guide who didn't have to escort us on walks but did, and showed us where to find the stunningly flavorful wild blueberries. The unexpectedly comfortable beds, complete with super warm and soft fur blankets. The friendly crew who offered to bring breakfast to my parents' cabin. The cabins that were scrupulously clean and classically beautiful in a Nordic style; ditto the outhouses (cleaner than many kitchens I've been in). The tasty local foods. And, of course, what we were there for: the geology of the place, the icebergs, and the glacier.
Now we look back on it with laughter and some pride that we made it through in good cheer.
WOW! On our 20th year Anniversary we went to Myrtle Beach and had the same thing happen to US! We were so bummed out. The Hotel was dirty, roaches crawling all over the patio (near the pools), our bathtub was stained :O, there was NO Wi-Fi, and our son got a high Fever the WHOLE week we stayed.. 🙁 Oh not to mention my youngest and I got lice! I had to cook and the 3 kids were bummed but WE as parents tried to laugh it off...because that is what parents do...we did manage to stay in the sun a bit though... and eat out twice @ *Cracker Barrel Rocks). NEVER will I stay there again... But we pulled through and sometimes we have to be grateful with whatever comes our way... It is isn't meant for us to live in 5 Star hotel anyway....... Some have no home to return to in Tennessee....etc.... Could be a heck of a lot worse...
Family vacations are such a mixed experice for us right now. Our 20 year college daughter has not with us the last 3 years, and it just does not feel right. Now our middle child is 18 and his work and soon college schedule will be his priority with scheduling. So my 13 year old is left with the prospect of having a very different experience for vacations in the next few years. Honestly I feel so sad. I want her (and me) to have us all togehter for vacation. I'll find a way for us to be together, but I'll have to get creative. Happily the older kids love to be us and their little sister, it's a timing thing!
We have had really great luck booking lodging with Airbnb. We have stayed at places all over the world and I spend a lot of time reading the reviews and looking at the pictures. We have always been glad to stay in a residence. Consider that for your next trip.