The weather might have been touch and go for a few days, but I’m so glad we decided to tough it out. Our last two days in the sand were so beautiful and there wasn’t a complaint heard either day!
Because of the storm ruining our mid-week plans, Jen and Allen decided to extend their trip by a few days and got to join us on the beach again for the weekend. There is nothing better than having plenty of kids to play with and the company was pretty much perfect. Josh and I joked on the way home that the only way to know if they really enjoyed the week was if they decide to coordinate our trips again next summer. Ha!
These four kids played so well together on the beach all weekend. Jud is obsessed with Ella, so he was pretty much holding her hand at all times. Aside from reapplying sunscreen and retrieving sandwiches from the coolers, they were completely self-sufficient. Big kids on the beach are amazing.
I did manage to snag a few good pictures of the girls on the beach that morning. It might not be beach portraits, but it will have to do!
Catching sand fleas was their biggest obsession. Sophie lovingly refers to these as diggers and was on a mission to catch as many as she could. We reminded them to keep adding cold water to the bucket, I wasn’t going to stand by for a mass genocide of the sand flea population. I’m happy to report, almost all of these guys made it safely back to the ocean.
This is probably the roughest I looked all week — I wore a one piece swimsuit and a tshirt because it was pretty cool that day and I got a little too much sun on my shoulders the night before. Oh well, these are the only family photos we got all week, so tshirts and beach hats will have to do.
How about that mermaid tail?! She is obsessed with that thing and we got lots of questions about it during our trip. She wore it to the pool a lot, but wanted me to get some photos of her “washed up on the beach” while we were there that day. For those with questions, Sophie is an extremely strong swimmer and I purposefully waited until this summer to buy her a tail (she’s been begging for years). We only let her swim with it on if we are very close by and I prefer for her to stay in shallow water where she can stand, unless we are in the pool with her.
See those two daddies up there? They are champs. They had two different holes going and the kids went back and forth between them. They are both master castle builders and lovers of children. Jennifer and I got all the talking and reading in that afternoon!
Ella wanted to pose with her hole because it was so big! When she was seated, I couldn’t even see the top of her head.
On our last day at the beach — a solo day — I only took a handful of photos and of them, these two were the best. Sophie crashed mid-afternoon and took an amazing nap on the beach. I mean, is there anything better in life?!
Josh and I attempted one last photo together, but we were underneath the tent and the lighting is weird. Either way, it deserves to be documented — I don’t take a minute with this guy for granted and I’d rather have a sweaty, sunburned, wrinkled face than no photo with him at all.
For the first year in camping history, we opted to head home on a Saturday evening. We usually get up bright and early on Sunday morning to pack and head home, but we were due to pick the dog up after lunch and nobody wanted to spend ten hours in the car that day. We agreed to stay on the beach until 2 o’clock and then get the camper completely packed in time for one last meal at our favorite beachside burger joint. We managed to see an alligator being relocated on our way out of the park, both girls slept the entire five hour drive, and we managed to only have a single blowout on our way home. Considering past adventures, that’s what we call a win!
See you next summer, Gulf Shores State Park!
And because I failed to get June’s Monthly Report up on the blog in a timely manner and most of this month’s infographic numbers came straight from the beach, I thought I’d share it here instead. How’s that for procrastination?!
