Back in December Zach and I were supposed to go to Jekyll Island for an Aflac Christmas Party. I was 7-8 weeks pregnant at the time and had the flu. No one knew we were pregnant yet and it was awful being so sick! I ended up being too sick to go on the trip so he went without me. He ended up LOVING it and has talked about it ever since saying he wants to take me. We had planned to go earlier in June but with Carter’s birth combined with my bed rest week we canceled the trip. We honestly didn’t think we’d get to go before Leo!
After I was feeling better I asked Stacy about us going and she said as long as I was done with my traveling before 36 weeks and as long as it was close that it was probably okay. It worked out SO PERFECT. The regional coordinator in our area with Aflac, Lara, had planned her annual Aflac Family Day for the weekend that I was 34 weeks pregnant. Originally I didn’t think I’d be able to travel and that we’d have to miss it. But with Stacy’s blessing…we could go! And, even better, the event was in St Simons which is literally right beside Jekyll!
Since Zach’s parents would also be attending the family day we talked to them about it and they agreed to switch vehicles with us there. Then they would take home our kids and have them stay with them for the night and Zach and I would go to Jekyll for our little baby moon 🙂 It seriously worked out SO PERFECTLY!!!
The theme of the Family Day was a Carnival. It was SO cute and SO fun! She had all these games set up and tons of carnival type food and such. The kids seriously had the best time and I think it was the best family day event we’ve attended!
And, duh, where there is a pool there are happy children!
They had a popcorn machine, snow cone machine, and cotton candy machine. Can you say HEAVEN?!?! It was a mega snack overload. Kye came up with a GREAT scheme where he’d go get me a snack and that way he could get himself one too 😉 I also made the error of telling him he could eat as much as he wanted and he took it mega seriously.
She had alllll the toy ducks in a row 🙂
Cotton Candy!
He gets that sweet tooth from his mama 😉 They will miss me being pregnant for SURE!
We had packed milk with us but had a miscommunication issue where Z didn’t know to keep the cooler upright…so we had milk all in our car and none in the cups. My kids got yet MORE junk by being allowed to drink those jug drinks since we didn’t have milk. I kept saying that at least Mrs. Charlotte and Mr. Rusty would be the ones dealing with the sugar high (and crash!) on the way home haha!
Lara’s daughter was offering face painting. If y’all know me…I’m not a face painting type mom. And Kye hasn’t ever been into it either! But I felt bad b/c she really wanted to paint faces so the kids had theirs done. It was so sweet of her and it all washed off as soon as they got back in the pool!
It’s a cupcake 😉
And Kye got a football
They even had a dunk tank set up and Mr. Rusty was up for the dunking! The kids all loved getting to dunk Big Papa!
Z let Britt dunk him 😉
After the festivities died down Zach and I got changed and freshened up and helped load the kids into the van and then we were off on our babymoon! The tour of the Jekyll Island Club was at 3 and we made it just in time 🙂 We did realize in the car that I had COMPLETELY forgotten my bathroom bag at home! Oops. I had several things packed in a separate bag to freshen up at the Aflac event so I had forgotten the bathroom bag. Thankfully I had enough stuff to get by for the trip, the only thing I needed was my mouth guard. I sleep with one every night (I clinch my jaw in my sleep) so it’s a must have item. We had to stop and buy one on the way to the tour! You can read about all the cool history of the club here!
The tour was on a little trolley thing and went around all of the historic Jekyll Island Club. It was really neat to learn about the history of the area and all the old school millionaires that vacationed there. We got to tour a couple of the homes and it was very interesting and fun! Zach loves history and I loved that he was so excited for me to be on the tour. It was so sweet and thoughtful of him to plan such a great little adventure for us 🙂
That morning we had driven the 2 hours to get there, then I spent all morning/afternoon in the hot sun at the event, so by the time the trolley ride came I was pretty much to my point of pregnancy exhaustion. I was a trooper about it and really, truly did enjoy it but I was SLOW moving and had to find lots of places to sit or lean when touring the homes. One lady kept saying that just looking at me made her feel miserable haha. People say the most strange things!?!?
Another person on the tour asked if the “AD” was someone’s initials that lived there hahaha
The coolest part to me about all the homes was how they were all SO different and you could really see the influences from where the people originally lived. Many of them reminded me of homes in Maine!
Cool carts they would use to ride around in…for a long time cars weren’t allowed at the club!
This was the home of the Rockefellers and we learned a lot about their family. It was neat that they were very frugal minded and didn’t spend frivolously even though they had so much wealth!
Phone used for the first transcontinental phone call!
We even got to see a wedding! Such a beautiful place to get married!
I thought it was cool that the big pool looking thing was actually used for laundry!
After the tour finished up we found our hotel and took showers and got ready for our big night out!
Zach made us dinner reservations at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. It was BEAUTIFUL and the food was AMAZING. It was probably one of the best meals, from start to finish, that either of us had ever had!
The hotel!
My man 🙂
Ugh. I do NOT want to see what I look like from the BACK. YIKES!
It was a very, very fancy place and we had multiple people who served our courses and treated us like royalty! If you are ever in the area of Jekyll Island it’s def worth the money to eat at Jekyll Island Club Hotel! And for taking the tour we got 10% off our meal 🙂 Someday maybe we’ll splurge and stay at the actual hotel too 🙂
His favorite caesar salad ever 🙂
When we walked in I saw that they have famous shrimp and grits and OH MY GOODNESS I know why! They were AMAZING. Like beyond amazing!
We had the perfect evening. It was just amazing from start to finish! The tour was fun and the dinner was so delicious and we both had great talks and just truly enjoyed each other. We NEEDED this getaway and I’m so, so thankful it all worked out for us to go 🙂
We opted out of the dessert and thought it’d be fun to go find some ice cream somewhere. Um. Good luck! We didn’t want to leave the island (there is a fee anytime you come back on) and nothing was opened? We went to a little grocery store and looked to see what they had and got some waters for the next day and when we stopped we saw a FULL rainbow! I’ve never seen one where you can see the full thing before! Plus it was over the ocean so it was extra beautiful! I did wish the kids could have been there to see it!!! There’s a bunch of pics of it but it was too cool not to take several!
While driving all over the island in search of a treat we also saw NINE deer!
We finally settled on Dairy Queen. I mean you can’t go wrong with some DQ right?!?!
We got back to the room and watched, shocker, The Office (we are on the final season!). We both had big plans for the next day: SLEEP! We just woke up whenever we wanted and ended up waking around 9ish…which for us is def sleeping in! We cuddled in the bed and had some really great talks. I struggle sometimes with having deeper conversation with Zach and it was a great opportunity to talk about some things and it really helped me feel SO much more connected with him! Which is really what I needed! We have always had a great relationship but want to work on building that friendship portion of it and this trip was a big step in the right direction with that for me!!! We talked and laughed and made plans for the future and just really were US and it was awesome!
A really fun part of the day was just taking our time. We had NO AGENDA! We hunted around for a place to eat and ended up finding out that no one was serving breakfast anymore by the time we were ready to eat it so we opted to stop at a random cute restaurant for an early lunch instead!
Pretty views!
We both had a great sandwich and Zach got potato skins and I splurged on some key lime pie that was amazing!
Once we finished up eating we headed to the beach! I can’t remember the last time that we just CHILLED on the beach together. It was soooooo perfect. It was the part of the trip I had been looking forward to the most. We just SAT. No kids to look after. No schedule to attend to. We both had our books to read and we just enjoyed the beautiful weather and each other! We went out in the ocean several times and even got rained on for a little bit!
We had FOUR HOURS of beach time which was truly perfection! I brought along the new edition of Babywise
and several magazines. I figured I’d start Babywise and get bored since I feel like I already know everything in it and then I’d read the magazines instead haha But actually I ended up reading the ENTIRE book during that one sitting! That thing sucked me right in and reminded me why I truly do love it so, so much!!! The newest edition is a GOOD bit different from the one I used with both Kye and Britt so I plan to combine some of the new stuff with my “old school” ways when Leo arrives 🙂
We packed up and headed out and hit up DQ one last time for a treat for the ride home. My FAVORITE cake is the DQ ice cream cake so when we saw these cup cakes we knew that’s what we wanted! We were pretty crunk about them but, of course, the one I picked had like ONE bite that had the yummy cake filling in it. My luck!!! They were still good though!
Not only did we get the cupcakes but we also got milkshakes haha. We def will be doing the 24 Day Challenge asap when Leo arrives 😉 We grubbed OUT on that trip for sure! We had a great ride home together. Listening to songs we both enjoy (no Disney songs for a change!). We also made lots of future travel plans for our family and just had FUN together. Life is so busy and it’s so hard to truly take the time out to ENJOY our marriage and the bond we have. It was the PERFECT trip for us! It was only about 24 hours but it was all we needed to be refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to face life with three kids 😉 I know we can handle anything together and I’m SO blessed and SO thankful to share my life with this man!!!
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