Hello all! I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you. My friend, Laura, introduced me to this website and I think it is so neat that I wanted to participate too! I decided to create a blog in order to stay in touch with some of our family and friends that aren't able to visit us very often. So many of you are such a vital part of who we are and we're just unable to keep in touch as well as we would like to. It is my hope that by sharing this blog with you, you will be able to see what we've been up to lately and see how quickly the children are growing. Corbyn is 8 years old and becoming a beautiful young lady while the boys will be turning 2 soon and are such a joy! We've recently taken a trip to Myrtle Beach so I thought that would be the best place to begin sharing.


We left on Sunday, June 17th (Father's Day) and stayed a week. My mom (Nana) went with us and was am amazing help with the children. We chose to leave on Father's Day to alleviate the sadness of Daddy being gone.

Anyway...we all had a great time at the beach and pools. Corbyn enjoyed the swimming pools more than the beach until...we purchased her a little net to catch fish with. She loved standing in the surf and trying to catch fish. Had I known that Randy would enjoy the fishing net as much as he did, I would have bought two of them. There was a storm drain outfall next to our hotel that emptied into the ocean and Corbyn and the boys liked to play there since the fish were abundant and the waves (for the boys) were minimal.

Micah and Carson really enjoyed all of the airplanes that flew over the ocean with advertisement banners behind them. We had amazing weather and no one got sunburnt since Nana was the sunscreen supervisor.

We stayed at an awesome hotel called Monterey Bay. It was on the north end of Ocean Blvd. and so much quieter than the south end. I will most likely try to stay at that end from now on. Each day began with a yummy free full service breakfast at the hotel and was followed by our exodus to the beach. We had tons of stuff in tow as you can imagine. The hotel only had two (very slow) elevators to cover 18 floors. When the Hoffmeisters got on the elevator, we pretty well filled it to capacity (imagine the double stroller and multiple beach bags, buckets, surf boards, etc.).

Corbyn, Randy, and I went to play miniature golf and Randy dominated. Corbyn gets better every time she plays. She feels the need to shout out every stroke you make by counting them loudly so all the world will know when you're flubbing up. She had a great time and Randy and I got very hot (we had fun too). Corbyn talked Nana and I into taking her again the next day. We all got a hole-in-one, but mine was the "mystery hole" of the day so I won another free game. I graciously gave it to Randy to take Corbyn for a third trip (heehee).

Back to the beach...the boys loved digging and playing in the sand. Nana and I looked for any reason at all to speak to Lifeguard Chris (kidding). Nana rented us an umbrella and beach chairs on Monday but we were so busy going back and forth between the beach and the pool, it seemed a waste to pay the rental fee every day. I wasn't especially anxious to get into the ocean since I have a primal fear of sharks. It didn't help that fishermen were in front of our hotel every morning catching baby sharks and reeling them in for me to see.

Carson and Micah also loved the pools. The hotel had an indoor pool which was the temperature of bath water so I felt pretty yucky when I was in it (don't germs like warm, moist places?). It also had a lazy river that Corbyn enjoyed and a baby pool (1 ft.) with overhead buckets that dumped every few seconds. The buckets kept younger children from getting into the pool so it basically defeated the purpose of having a baby pool. The hotel also had an outdoor pool on ground level that we visited throughout the day. We kept a path between the pools and the beach. It also had a rooftop pool that was outside of our room.

All in all the weather was great. We only had rain on Wednesday afternoon but had a full day of playtime in the morning before it came. We filled the time by playing peek-a-boo and riding the luggage cart in the hallway (desperate times...desperate measures).

By the end of the week, the cramped quarters were beginning to take their toll on the grownups. Corbyn had caught several little fish (minnows) and some live baby clams and was keeping them in one of her sandbuckets. They were to be released the morning we left. Nana went into our bedroom to get something and noticed a very large wet spot in the floor. You guessed it, one of the boys dumped the fish and other wildlife into our bedroom floor. Luckily, it had just happened and we were able to save the fish. Randy and Corbyn took them immediately down to the ocean and freed them. Never a dull moment!

The car ride to the beach was great but the car ride home seemed endless. We were all exhausted and anxious to be home. Nana was a trooper as she rode in the very back of the van with Corbyn and behind the boys. That is basically the details of our trip. More than you could ever want to know...