beach week: days 1 & 2

We just got back from a fabulous family vacation in Destin. It was seriously a wonderful week, with only a few kinks. I definitely learned, however, that there is a reason why people say "family vacation" as opposed to just "vacation". A week at the beach with kids is more than a little exhausting, and I still had mouths to feed, diapers to change, meals to cook, laundry to wash, dishes to scrape, a home to clean up, a sick baby to attend to, an ornery 3-year-old to discipline, etc. BUT (and this is a big "but"), I got to do all these things with this as my back-drop:

AND (and this is a big "and"), I got to have so.much.fun. with my incredible little family, got to watch Noah play his little heart out and become a beach bum before my very eyes, got to experience Sam's first glimpse of the ocean and first feel of the sand between his toes, got to eat delicious seafood, got to do a little shopping, and thanks to my a-ma-zing husband, got to relax on the beach for a few hours each day during naptime. I even got to read TWO books! Heaven. So it turns out that "family vacation" is the best of both worlds, and when it came down to it, I never wanted to end!

In my true over-blogging and waaaaay over-photographing fashion, I'm going to break our trip down and post about each day separately. There are just too many memories and far too many pictures to fit into one little post. This first recap will be a little long cause I'm covering the first two days in one.

DAY 1

Day 1 was travel day for the boys and me. We scored $19 tickets with the new airline that flies direct to Destin from LR. Um, yes please. I have to say, however, that I am not entirely convinced that this was easier than driving. If Josh had been with us then it it definitely would have been easier, however he drove down the following day with Micah & Kelsey (Josh's brother and sister-in-law), so I was flying solo with the boys. All in all, with delays and wait time it was about a 6-hour ordeal, which is really only a few hours shorter than the drive. And the flight time is a little over an hour, meaning most of those 6 hours were spent wrangling kids and finding my way through airports with a double stroller, two carseats, a diaper bag, a purse, Noah's backpack, a rolling suitcase, and oh yeah two kids in tow. Not to mention the waiting. Thank goodness one of my friends and her little girl--one of Noah's BFF's--was on the flight with us. Without them I'm pretty sure I would have lost it. And both boys were perfect on the actual flight! Noah loved every second of his first flight, and Sam was pretty much in awe and just really, really tired. We made it to my parent's condo by around 11:00 and all of us were asleep by midnight. Whew.

 Overpack much? This is probably about 2/3 of our stuff!

This gives you an idea of just how many kids were on our flight!

 Noah did so great on his first flight!

DAY 2

Despite our late night after traveling, the boys were up and at 'em by 7:15 on Sunday. I held Noah off as long as I possibly could, but he was dying to get to the beach so we were down there by 9:30. I honestly wasn't even sure if I was going to attempt the beach with the two of them alone, but I just couldn't wait and neither could Noah! I was amazed at how easy they both were. Noah didn't love the water, but he fell in love at first sight with the sand. He seriously jumped in it and started rolling around as soon as we stepped off the boardwalk. Sam was happy and even took a nap for over an hour!

Naptime at the beach

 Whew! He likes it!

 Loving the sand.

We were so lucky that some of our friends were staying a few buildings down from us and they walked down to play with us for awhile that morning. Noah had fun playing with Tony and Karoline, and it was so nice to see some familiar faces while we waited for Daddy to get in town! Thanks, Carozzas, for making the trek down the beach to play with us! Loved our visit! 

Josh, Micah, & Kelsey rolled into town around 3:30 that afternoon while the boys were napping. I was oh-so-happy to see them! We unloaded everything quickly, Kelsey and I ran to the grocery store, and then we all headed out to Baytowne Wharf to have dinner and play!

Noah was giddy that Kelsey & Micah were with us.

He got to play with the band!

Sweet Sam spent a lot of time in his stroller throughout the week.

"I'm a giant!" 

See? Giddy!

Loving the fun Baytowne playground!

stay tuned...