We took our first week long vacation with the girls this summer and had an incredible time. We were so excited to be able to get away with the girls and really just focus on spending time with them. The vacation turned out to be even better than we imagined. We spent a lot of special quality time with them and loved watching their pure joy and excitement on the beach.
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| Looking at our condo "The Mystique" from the beach |
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| Views from our condo (19th floor) |
Jason and I went back and forth trying to figure out how we would pull off getting the beach chairs, canopy, beach toys, towels and everything else to the beach with only 2 adults. Before the trip, we looked up the prices to rent these things, but ended up buying a canopy and some cheap chairs at Academy. It was cheaper than renting, and we just decided that we would set it up one day and leave it on the beach and hope that no one would steal it. It ended up working out! It was a little painful getting it down day #1, but then for the rest of the beach days, it was all out there ready for us to set up!
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| Our little set up - not bad for just the 2 of us |
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| The way we'd leave it at the end of the day |
The condo we chose was at the west side of Gulf Shores which turned out to be perfect. There were not many condos around us, mainly just houses. This left a very empty beach for us to enjoy. We could see a lot more people towards the main area of Gulf Shores, but it was pretty empty where we hung out!
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| Empty beach |
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| Ready to jump in that water on day #1 |
We made it to the beach on Saturday afternoon which allowed for us to head to Walmart for groceries and set up the condo for the week. On Sunday and Monday, we made it out to the beach around 9am, would head back for naps around 2pm, then head out to dinner around 6pm. On Monday night, we were able to meet up with Janice & Jill for dinner at Lulu's restaurant. They were at Fort Morgan beach which wasn't too far away. It was fun to see them and catch up over dinner.
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| Nana & Auntie Jill with the girls |
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| Fun night at Lulu's |
On Wednesday morning, Addie and Jason headed out to the beach to look for sand dollars. They came back to the condo with a bucket full of baby crabs.
Camryn said "look at my tutu Mama." Poor girl, we covered her face up with white sunscreen!
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| She had a little boo boo on her head from a hula hoop injury at Lulu's |
One windy afternoon, Addie and Jason flew our kite:
The girls also enjoyed playing in the sand each day. It wasn't super hot one afternoon, so the 5 of us worked on building sand castles.
Taylor was adamant about building her own sandcastle versus doing it with the 4 of us, so here's what she created! It turned out pretty cool (although daddy did help with the moat).
For the last few months, I haven't been able to touch our family blog because we have been remodeling the house. And, I'll be pretty covered up at night time getting the Young Life banquet set up in September, so one of my goals for the trip was to get caught up on our blog during nap time. I was able to do this within the first 4 days and it felt so great! After that, I just hung out during naps!
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| Playing cards during nap time |
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| Dinner at a Mexican restaurant |
Jason took Taylor and Addie crab hunting on Thursday morning and they caught even more crabs and sand dollars.
If you asked the girls what they were looking forward to at the beach, they would say "catching sand fleas" so that is what they did every chance they could during this beach trip. Sand fleas totally gross me out, but I would "try" to play it cool because I want the girls to love bugs and be adventurous, so I would just watch "at a distance" during their sand flea hunting.
Jason would find the area with the sand fleas, then dig them up and throw them on the beach for the girls. The girls (mainly Taylor) would run around scooping them up.
Then after the sand fleas, they got obsessed with catching clams:
At the end of this day, we released all the clams and sand fleas back into the ocean:
Here's some more pictures from the ocean using the GoPro. Floating in the ocean with the girls turned out to be my highlight of the trip:
The girls learned how to boogie board:
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| Camryn holding her breath waiting for the wave |
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| About to get caught by a wave |
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| The ocean was so calm on the last day |
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| Amazing sunset |
As our family beach trip comes to a close, we are filled with such thankfulness that we could do this trip and be able to spend extra time with our girls. The girls had a blast, it was super relaxing, and we had a ton of fun as a family! Their personalities made us laugh a lot! Jason and I really enjoyed parenting together this week. So many times during a normal week at home, we just sort of do the "tag team parenting" where one parent does things, then the other takes over. This week, we parented the full week together and it was a very memorable experience for us! We feel lucky that we could do this vacation and look forward to doing again in the future!
