On Friday, my parents and sis picked me up at 8:30am, loaded all my stuff into their car and we were off to SC. My sister and I slept until we were awoken by my parent’s trying to use the hands-free phone in the car to call my brother. It took about 10 minutes of my mom yelling ‘Call John!’ for it to stop saying ‘Press pound,’ ‘Call Shaun?’ ‘Would you like me to repeat the choices?’ and finally dial my brother.

My mom has a talent for packing car food, so we stopped only to pee and get gas, making the trip about 14 hours. We did luck out at one rest stop and find soft pretzels that were surprisingly good.

Around 6pm we stopped at a Holiday Inn just outside of Winston-Salem. My mom, forever getting free stuff, used her points card to get us a room on the executive floor (fancy!), goodie bags with popcorn, muffins, and apples, and free coffee, tea and cookies. We had dinner at Applebee’s and then watched Juno in the hotel room. The second the movie was finished and the lights were out my mom was wide awake and wanted to use her coupon for a free glass of wine at the hotel bar. We convinced her to stay in bed and then, remembering a joke I’d heard on Jimmy Fallon about Tempurpedic beds and the infamous glass of wine, I sent my self and consequently my mom and sister into a fit of giggles.

The next day, after waking up at 7:45 to run outside in the sweltering heat, we were back on the road. Five more hours in the car, picked my bro up from the airport, swung by Sonic and we rolled up to the house at about 5pm. My aunt, uncle and cousins we already there, so we did the usual running of the house, checking out bedrooms and yelling Marco! Polo! to located each other.

For our first dinner in SC we all pitched in to make spaghetti.

The next few nights were filled with completely silly games of drunken Jenga and Quelf (which will get its own post as it is my new favorite game).

Days were spent floating in the pool, which we almost always had to ourselves.

And working on my tan sunburn.

There is a running joke that all my family does on vacation is read. I think between the five of us we brought about 15 books and I finished two of mine, so I suppose it’s true :)

When asked to pack his toys for vacation, my 2.5-year-old cousin brought his coocoo (motorcycle) helmet and gloves. I love that he looks like a little bobble head wearing it.

On one of the days a couple dudes showed up to paint the trim on part of the house. One of them brought his macaw, Maximus, who hung out on his perch and chattered away while they worked.

My aunt and uncle always bring their margarita maker on vacation. We also drank a whole lot of schnoculator (a Tito’s vodka, blue raspberry, lemonade, limeade, Redbull concoction), crack juice (some combination of crystal light and flavored vodka)

Aand…lots and lots of jello and pudding shots.

Which are perfect to eat in the morning while doing yoga :)

There was also a little bit of shopping, checking out a sea turtle nests, singing the ‘Bed Intruder’ song (Run and tell that!), multiple plastic blow-up monkies, leftover steak stealing, late-night pool volley ball, really loud yet tiny frogs, ghost crab catching, beach wogging, “hair”plane flying, and rat rooming the rat room.

They are definitely where I get my silly from – love my family :)