After the busy holly jolly season, Malisa, Collin and I drove down to Virginia Beach to visit with my dad and Mom-mom. We also saw my uncle Mike (Dad's brother), Uncle Bob and Aunt Linda. There was more family, but you get the idea...
Normally when we come down, we try to stay at the Navy Lodge on Dam Neck, but they were full, and good thing, because we had a GREAT time staying at the Marriott on Virginia Beach...and with the government rate, it ended up costing about the same.
Here's Collin, checking out the view when we first arrived in our room..
Here was our room...it was cute. And of course, Malisa had to go the extra mile and decorate Collin's bed with his friend Thomas the Tank Engine.
Collin wasted no time and wanted to head down to "Berginia Beach" right away to check out the sand and waves...
So, we went down and played in the sand...
..and found some sand piles that had been pushed up along the beach
After jumping off the piles for a little while, Collin wanted to make a tunnel like Tommy goes through...so we dug
And I convinced Collin that he should get in the tunnel...
Well, you can guess what any reasonable dad would do to their son next.....bury him.
Then we walked along the boardwalk for a while to see the new King Neptune statue that was put up in front of the new Hilton hotel (Auntie Paris' Hotel, as I refer to her).
Speaking of Auntie Paris...here's Malisa and Collin outside her new place now...it's actually really nice. There's a lot of shops inside and a Starbucks, which is all we cared about.
The next day we went to visit family in the morning and then came back to the hotel in the afternoon. Here's the view from the balcony...
Of course, Collin wanted to go down to the beach again...this time to test the ocean surf.
It was like 75 degrees at least that day, amazing weather for January. Reports came in from my Massachusetts contacts that they were having weather just as warm up there...too weird. My sister says's it's El Nino and that made her go for a walk....see her blog for more details. :) Here's Malisa and Collin again....he's doing his "Don't tell ME daddy" pose that became repeated far too often to everybody during this trip. Still love him though...he's lucky he's so damn cute.
We were making our plan....how we would attack the waves and then retreat before they could counterattack and get us..
I had a meeting with the General to make sure that plan was okay....she agreed it was solid and agreed to take this publicity photo.
So...with our solid plan...we set out to battle the waves. Collin armed with a bucket...and me with a nerf football.
Here we are in "retreat" mode....I don't like to retreat...I say we were tactically falling back to improve our position
The waves proved to have a couple tricks up their sleeves and managed to catch Collin off guard....actually knocking him over and getting a mouthful of salt water...
Undaunted though...Collin wanted more immediately! With battle cries of "Let's do it again Daddy!" we ventured back...
And so we did...but this time, I was a little closer at hand...scared he was getting too brave, lol.
We finally headed back up to the room in time to catch the sunset (East coast...so nothing impressive to see on the beach really....had to look out over the landscape instead)...but managed to catch this cool eye effect.
Then we chilled out on the balcony for a while and watched the sun go down on the beach. Malisa and I toasted with a glass of Scotch and Collin had a glass of apple juice. (Along with his 3 binkeys that he's not supposed to have in the daytime).
We finished the evening with some crab legs at Harpoon Larry's Killer Seafood where Collin fell asleep on Malisa's lap.
The third day arrived, Sunday I think. And we managed to get up and see the sunrise...here's Malisa's sunrise picture..
Collin got to do some bonding with my dad, his "Pop".
They were playing in the pine needles and learning about worms and pinecones...very cute.
They became such good buddies that Collin didn't want to leave and go to Target unless dad was going too...
Finally, I convinced Malisa to get a bikini so she could go swimming with Collin and I down in the hotel pool...here she is looking all beautiful!
Okay, okay....can't show any more of those pictures (unless you're willing to pay $19.95/month on my website...) All in all though, we had a great time and we're still here. Gonna head back to Massachusetts tomorrow once Collin starts to get tired enough where we can put him in the car seat and have him sleep most of the way. It's a long drive and probably toughest on him having to be strapped in the whole way. I set him up with Tommy and Mickey Mouse DVD's, but still...it's a long drive. I head back to Korea on Friday morning....hopefully my luggage will fare better than last time! We all went for one last walk on the beach in the morning before we left. Collin's little footprints on the sand were all that we left behind.
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