Beach Trip 2011 (Part 1)

We have been home from our beach trip for a week now, and I am STILL sorting through the 800 photos that I brought home with us! With so many pictures and so many stories to tell, I'm going to break the trip into several parts.

Day 1 and 2: Dee Dee's House

On our way down to the beach, we stopped in Mississippi and spent two nights with my sister, Dee Dee. We always have a great time with her and my beautiful niece, Reagan. Being there is always relaxing and fun. Saturday, we went to eat at my very most favorite fast food pizza place, Mazzios. I use to eat there all the time when we lived in MS, and I miss their calzone rings now that we are in Texas. So anytime we can that is where I want to eat. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy, as there really are a lot of "nicer" restaurants we could eat at, but they are sweet to oblige.

Saturday night, my other big sister and my niece, Tammy and Paige, came over and had dinner with us. One of my sister's oldest friends, Diedra, also came. We had the most delicious dinner and then had the BEST time visiting. I laughed so hard I cried. That's a sign of a good time!

London and Dylan's favorite part of Aunt Dee Dee's house is the trampoline! London was cracking me up because anytime she jumped, she stuck her tongue out like in the picture above.

We don't get together nearly often enough, but when we do, we really have such a great time. Sisters are the best!

Day 3: Sunday: First night at the Beach!

We hit the road at a leisurely pace Sunday morning. The traffic was good, and we made pretty good timing. I always feel like it takes us an unreasonable amount of time to do rode trips. If map quest says "5 hours" it usually takes us 7. Well, its not really that bad, but it seems like it. But Sunday's trip went pretty smoothly and we made it to the Ferry just in time.

The kids were SO excited to take the ferry. Dylan was having a lot of trouble understanding how in the world we were going to be putting our CAR on a boat. Both of the kiddos loved the ride, and even though I was a little anxious, Daniel and I enjoyed it too. Defiantly a neat experience.

I had planned for us to have some time on the beach once we got checked in on Sunday, but it was almost 5:00 and we were all getting hungry. So we changed plans, got dressed, and checked out Tacky Jack's. TJ's is supposed to be one of the best places to eat in Gulf Shores, but I have to say that I was really less than impressed. It was very pricey and the quality was less that amazing. It didn't taste bad, but it wasn't $80 good either.

We still had some daylight once we had eaten, so we suited up and headed to the beach. I really was not sure what to expect with London. I had been trying to hype up the beach and the waves to her in our conversations over the past few weeks, but she can be very skidish of water and of new situations, so I really just did not know how she would react. She LOVED the water and they waves though!

Dylan loved the ocean too, but I had no doubt that he would.

I am not a huge lover of being IN the water, but I do love to look at it from the shore.

Daniel is a big kid at heart and loves everything about the beach.

I'm not sure who had the most fun,

Dylan, Daniel, or London.

We splashed around until the sun started setting and then headed back in. Once back at our condo, we discovered two things. One, we should leave the temperature of the condo up higher so that it doesn't feel like your walking into a meat locker while your soaking wet (this makes for very grumpy children). And, two, Sand is very, ,very hard to get out of long blond hair.

*lots more to come*