Beach Vacation

I love the beach. Like seriously.. L.O.V.E. the beach. This year was a bittersweet vacation. It was the first family vacation without my momma. And her love for the beach was well greater than my love for the beach. She had arranged for us to stay at a condo of one of her customers from the bank. They had their own place in Pensacola. About 5 days before we were set to leave, the oil from the spill started washing ashore there. So, we had to take a rain check and find another place. We ended up staying at a place we had stayed before. The hotel not the condo. Also ended up having to switch rooms because of double booking and not getting the room we asked for.. blah, blah, blah. That is neither here nor there anymore. The kids were bouncing off the walls to go play on the beach, to go play at Funland.. to just go play. Once we got settled and got groceries bought we took the kids to the beach.. it was night by that point but they didn't care. By the end of the night two flashlights had met their death and a little boy by the name of Nathan had to be scooped out of the water by his ankles (first thing I could grab). Most of the days were spent going to the beach for an hour or two, hitting up the pool for another hour and then going inside for lunch and then naps. During naps, Kent and I would sneak away to lay out on the beach and swim in the ocean together. Just us. Because when the kids were there, Nathan was hooked onto my hip. He didn't care a thing in the world about his float. So when we were alone it was nice to just be able to float, swim, talk.. Then after naps we all showered and then went out to eat and then to do something fun. Two nights we went to Funland (arcade type place that my family has gone to for as long as I can remember), another night we went to ride go karts and to let the kids ride kiddie rides, another night we went shopping and then out to eat at Margritaville and one night we took the kids back to the beach for some night time playing in the sand. Nathan and I got our first jellyfish stings together. He took it well. Jon Kent started swimming under the water (still with his back float on though). Zoey got a hair wrap put in her hair, I ran into a follower of my blog (that was pretty neat) and I just enjoyed the week. It went by all too quickly. Before I knew it, we were on our way (9 hours of driving) back home. Back to reality. It was good though. A lot of memories were made, a lot of memories were remembered.

A very special thank you goes to my daddy.. who very generously allowed us to take this vacation with him and my family on his "bill".

And now for the pictures. Enjoy!