We just spent a wonderful week at the beach. And now you are going to get a recap. We took over 1100 pictures. I will try to spare you. ha! But I will share a few.
We left at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning to drive. It took us about 14 hours. We thought we were brilliant and that the girls would sleep about half the trip. ha! I think Hollis slept 20 min the whole trip. But I was very proud - the girls were SO great traveling both ways. I love the trip through the AR and MS delta and Alabama. It's fun to see so many different places.
We stayed in Perdido Key, FL at the Indigo Condos. We usually stay in Gulf Shores but we loved PDK. It was a lot less crowded. We had a great condo on the beach. I think I could live there forever.
One of our favorite things to do is go to the Track in Gulf Shores and the girls ride all the rides.
The girls loved the beach a little but not a lot. They didn't love the waves or the sand. So we only spent about an hour or two at the beach every day and then we went to the pool. They LOVED swimming. I hadn't had a chance to get the girls in swimming lessons this year but a week at the pool and Harper was basically swimming like a fish. She LOVED the water.
We would get on the beach every day by 8:30 and eat lunch in the condo and then spend a little more time at the pool and we would be done by about 2 every day. We like to go out to eat on vacation - that's half of our fun. I know a lot of people like to cook at the condo but we don't want any part of that. I love to cook but not on vacation. Since it's so crowded everywhere in the summer and because we have young kids - we get to the restaurants at 4:30. It worked great - we never waited and we would be done by 6 or so. Then we had time to do something else and still get the girls to bed at a reasonable hour.
I realized one night that Hollis was wearing the same dress Harper wore on the last trip at the same restaurant. This is both girls at 3.5 at Louisiana Lagniappe in my favorite little crab dress. I got this dress from a fellow blogger who has 3 girls. I think this dress has had a really great life. ha!
This is pretty much how Hollis felt about the beach. She is a little OCD so she wanted to wash her hands every time she got a grain of sand on her.
Sweet Harper
This girl makes me laugh so hard
Some of our best friends were about 15 minutes down the road from us the same week. We all live within 5 minutes of each other and see each other a lot but we don't all get together for dinner much. Since we were so close - we planned a night to meet up for dinner and it was so fun. I had to bribe the boys with candy to take a picture with us. ha!
Me and my biggest blessings. I loved having a week to just be with these girls.
Our family
We had so much fun with Laurie & Steve and girls. This was our 4th time to go with them to the beach and my 8th beach trip with Laurie. Our girls got along so well on this trip. They stayed in the same room and there was NO fighting the entire week. They would just go off and play together and it was so nice.
We took a few beach pictures super early one morning and then went to breakfast.
My secret wish is that we will go to the beach together when they are teenagers and they will still be friends. Pretty sure they won't let us put them in matching dresses but at least they may still like each other.
We tried to take sunset pictures one night but it was so windy it was impossible. I realized we all had green and white clothes (didn't plan it) so we broke those out.
We ate at some great restaurants. Thanks to your recommendations - we tried Cobalt for the first time and it was our new favorite. We even at there twice. Our next favorite is Louisiana Lagniappe. We also tried Fisherman's Corner in PDK and it was a little scary looking when we drove up but it was great. We ate at the Fish House in Pensacola and it was good. We tried Lillian's Pizza and loved it. But we ate at our old faithful Oyster House and all decided we hated it and that was the last time we would eat there. The wait is crazy and the food isn't really very good.
My favorite girls in my favorite swimsuit.
My favorite thing to do at the beach is get up really early and go for a walk around sunrise. There is nothing more beautiful than the ocean at sun rise. I love it. I wish I could do that every morning.
And then yesterday we left early morning again and drove the 14 hours home. We had a wonderful time but I was glad to get home to Arkansas.
Can't wait to do it again.
