Beach Trip 2017

What a treat! We were so happy that we got to take a beach trip this summer!  After last summer, we decided to not go a summer without a vacation.  We loved going at the end of the summer so we had something to look forward to all summer.  

We were excited that Rebecca and Daniel joined us for a few days.  They had a brilliant idea to take Sarah Kathryn down to FL with them!  ha!  Suckers!  It's no secret that she is no fun in the car. Turns out...she was great for them!  Rebecca and Daniel are great travel partners.   Daniel even brought his drone and took some sweet pics of us out in the water.  They took care of the kids one night so that we could have a date night, too!  So thoughtful!

Disclaimer: Sarah Kathryn somehow deleted most all my pictures of us at the beach from my phone.  Thankfully I had a few on my camera!

We got to Blue Mountain and unloaded all of our stuff and then headed to the grocery store.  The boys were not happy about that!  We bought an ice cream maker at the store so we had to stop at the Mexican grocery store for Mexican vanilla... this is the secret ingredient thanks to Anna for telling me!

I took this and sent to Anna!  haha!

When Rebecca and Daniel arrived they unloaded and immediately helped us blow up the floats!  Bennett had a baseball glove, Henry had emoji poop, SK had a unicorn, and Rebecca had an engagement ring float!  So much fun!

First day on the beach!

Henry saw some 13 year old girl and kept trying to get their attention.  So he would walk over to them and put sand on his head to "impress" them!  Such a cutie!

The boys went fishing so Rebecca, SK, and I went to Tommy Bahama for their special lemonade.  It was so tart we kept watching SK take sips and then pucker after every sip! Hilarious!

Sadly, my only beach pic of all 3!

Evening Swim time

This girl was in heaven!

She made a sweet friend names Ella.  They played the whole trip!  How sweet!

Sure hope I can find more pictures from the beach.  Maybe Neil or Rebecca have some on their phones.  We took my camera out to the beach to take family pics.  It kept getting foggy due to the humidity.  Daniel made it work!

The best we got!

Crazy pic!

 We went to Destin for the day on our last full day at the beach.  We road a pirate ship!  It was such a fun little outing!  It was SO HOT, but the kids were entertained the whole time and had a lot of fun for 2 hours!  I thought were were going to melt it was so hot.  At one point we had to go down under the boat to hear how to find the treasure and it was just one parent allowed to go.  I went with the kids and there was A/C in the bottom of the boat!  Highlight!

Poor sweaty thing!

The boys had to mop the deck while the girls got their faces painted.

Swabbing the deck!

Henry was not trying to clean the deck.

She chose scars all over her face for the face painting.

Henry chose a mustache. 

Bennett too!

"hula hula" as SK calls it

There was a dad hula hooping contest and guess who won?

NEIL!  I was so proud!

We found the treasure!  Neil said they threw it out in the ocean when we were under trying to find out where the treasure was!  They each got 2 things.

She wanted her picture with the "girl pirates!"

Pirate fun!

 We went to Old Florida Fish House for our last night in FL dinner.  It was delish!  And we even matched!

Handsome boys in their blue linen

We had so much fun on our trip.  We just LOVED it!  We tried so hard to find another place to stay for 1 more night and couldn't.  We were so sad to leave because this was our first vacation that actually felt like a vacation!  

Since all 5 of us would be in the car on the way home, I wrapped up some presents for the kids to open while we drove 9 hours to get home.  They had to earn them and it couldn't have gone better!  I was patting myself on my back the whole time because there were almost no melt-downs or fighting.   The gist was they had to earn starbursts as a team and if they were nice or quiet or happy I added starbursts to a jar.  If there was fighting or screaming or crying I would take them away.  Once they got 10 they were able to earn a present!  They weren't all that great...candy...coloring books...bubbles...random toys...really just a bunch of leftover festive favors! :)

Worked amazingly!!!  I will def do it again!

So much fun to open presents!