aDvenTureS in ParEnThOod 2: Beach Babies

Ok, I promised a blog about the beach, complete with pictures, so here goes. Hope you have as much fun reading as we did making the memories!

So, the kids and I were fortunate enough to tag along with my cousin and her family for vacation this year to Orange Beach, AL (for those of you not in the know as I wasn't, it's near Gulf Shores). Now, as excited as I was about going on vacation, I was very nervous about 2 specific parts of the week.

The first part was obviously the drive. It was 522 miles from my house to the condo. As the drive grew closer, I chose not to look at it as 522 miles, but rather only 140 miles further than Nashville (a trip we had made 2 weeks prior with no issues). Little did I know, those 140 miles would almost be my undoing. The trip went find until about 140 miles from the beach. It then took us 4.5 hours to go the last 140 miles. To say that I was over the drive by the time we got there might have been the understatement of the year. 11 hours in a car with the kids by myself is another thing I can add to my list of accomplishments. The kids did great though! God was looking out for the 3 of us that day.

The second part I was a little worried about was the condo – not the fact that it was 6 floors off the ground (I had Melissa and Uncle Dennis to do their fair share of worrying over that), but the fact that there were 7 of us that were going to share a 900 square foot condo for 6 days. And, believe it or not, we all survived and did it quite well. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't lived it. That's just a lot of people in a small space, but the kids all did great! (I wasn't really ever worried about the adults!)

So, now into the good stuff. Of course almost immediately when we got there we trekked out to the beach. Then brought stressor number 3. SAND. I hate sand. The kids didn't seem to mind it much, but I just hate it, and when you have two small kids, you can't help but get sand all over you, but as the week went on, I learned to live with it and enjoyed myself.

So, our days pretty much went as follows. Wake up (my kids slept surprisingly late for them, i.e. woke up after 6am each morning), head to the beach, kids beg to go to the pool, we tell them we didn't drive 522 miles to swim at the pool, play at the beach for a few hours, take a quick dip at the pool, lunch, naps, crafts, out for dinner.

This restaurant served the kid's meals on frisbees so it gave my kids weapons to use as they were digesting!

We want to go to the beach. Let us out!

One day I decided to take Braden to a souvenir store instead of making him take a nap. Big mistake! He loved the souvenir store, but had numerous melt downs the rest of the day. That was of course the day that all 4 families (there were 2 other families there with us) decided to go to dinner… That night was not my best.

After Braden screaming at me for 20 minutes, we get to the restaurant only to find that Amelia has thrown up all over herself. Change her, make it to the restaurant to find there is an hour and 40 minute wait. Decided to eat at the grill instead. We sat down and as everyone else was arriving and we were getting our drinks the waiters come running through telling everyone that we all have to go to the front of the parking lot. I grabbed what I could off the table and headed out with the kiddos (Bobby was carrying Braden because he had fallen asleep in his lap). I honestly thought it was a restaurant mandated limbo contest or something… No, come to find out it was a bomb threat. So we, along with the other 7000 people waiting to eat at this restaurant were ushered to our cars and out of the parking lot. The stuff I left on the table was never to be seen again, but nothing I can't replace. The group decided to head to another restaurant closer to the hotel. All 13 of us were seated immediately on an outside patio. To say that the service was slow was perhaps the understatement of the year. It took over 2 hours to be served and get our dinner eaten. Keep in mind that we had a 10 month old, 3 3 year olds, a 5 year old and a 6 year old. Thank goodness they discovered that they could feed Amelia's cheerios to the fish and turtles swimming around the patio. We quickly went through those so they started throwing whatever they could find – bread, ice, probably a fork or two, but no one really cared because it kept them busy. Amelia decided that 2 hours was too much for her and promptly threw up on me again. At this point in the evening I decided I was done. Took the kids back to the condo and changed clothes and put everyone to bed. However, considering that there could have been a bomb and we had that many kids in a confined space for 2 hours, the evening didn't go nearly as bad as it could have!

Do you think the turtles will eat my little sister if we throw her over?

Our last afternoon we took a Dolphin tour. The whole trip from beginning to end was fantastic! When we got to the marina there were jellyfish everywhere, so the kids loved seeing that. The boat ride out was very nice and we saw dolphins almost immediately. We then hooked up with a charter shrimp boat, and unbeknownst to me, dolphins are smart enough to follow the shrimp boat to catch whatever falls out of the net. So, for about 20 minutes the dolphins followed the shrimp boat and we followed the dolphins. Then, the shrimp boat brought their net in and the dolphins went nuts! The folks on the charter boat were hand feeding fish to the dolphins at one point and that was really awesome! On the way back, all 3 of the older kids got to drive the boat, which was super cool for them! However, all of that being said, one of my favorite memories of that boat ride was the way Amelia looked in her life jacket – think of a neon orange stay puft marshmallow!

I see one!

Just call me Puft Diddy!

Are you sure I'm going the right way?

The trip home wasn't any better or worse than the trip out there. Took 10 ½ hours to get home, but I drove in rain for the last 45 minutes and Amelia got sick every time we stopped so I call it a draw =)

We had such a fabulous time, and even though my kids probably won't remember it, I know they had a great time while they were there! So glad we got to go!