Beach Retreat

In college my sorority sisters and I went on an annual beach retreat each year. Some of my favorite college memories are from those weekends. These were always "No Booze, No Boys" weekends. Just time hanging out with my sorority sisters, we played silly games, we cooked meals together, we hung out at the beach. We made goals for the the coming year. Fun Times.

This past weekend we went on a beach retreat with Mike's unit. In 2004 the Army began a program called Strong Bonds, it's a chaplain-led program designed to increase Soldier and Family readiness through relationship education and skills training. Multiple deployments and increased training and operations schedules have added significant stress to military families and the Strong Bonds program is the Army's approach to helping manage that stress. Preliminary studies of participants of the Strong Bonds program have a 50% lower divorce rate and increased marital satisfaction. This was actually the 2nd time we've been able to participate in a Strong Bonds retreat and we all had a great time! We made the short drive to Myrtle Beach and got to stay in a beautiful resort. Childcare was provided and while I was really nervous about leaving Olivia all the childcare professionals loved Olivia and she spent the day running around a huge empty meeting room at the resort. She had a blast! Peter also loved hanging out with other kids and was talking up a storm by the time we left. Peter would happily told me about all the cool toys he played with each day when we picked him up.

The curriculum for the retreat was based on the "5 Love Languages" (for more info you can check out the website http://www.5lovelanguages.com/). It was interesting curriculum and I do feel like we have some new tools to communicate with each other.

The resort had a beautiful waterpark and Peter and Mike had fun enjoying the slides an splash park while Olivia and I enjoyed the lazy river. Mike and I were able to enjoy some solo beach time which was AWESOME! It's amazing how different things are when you're not schlepping chairs, towels, umbrellas, toys, kids, snacks, sunscreen, etc, etc, etc! We also got to enjoy an early dinner date at a great Myrtle Beach restaurant (Sea Captain's House) where I had Hummingbird Cake for the first time--it was fantastic, a southern spin on carrot cake, so yummy!

All in all we had a blast, here are a few pictures of out weekend. For the most part we were having too much fun enjoying ourselves to be busy taking pictures. I did include a few of our attempts of a family shot on the beach. Apparently we will not be sending out a beach themed Christmas card this year If you are an Army Family and you haven't been on a Strong Bonds retreat you should check it out!