Beach Vacation, Part 3

Thursday started with a sand castle competition between Nathan and Elisabeth and Samuel and Katherine. These competitions will work a little better when Katherine gets older, but Samuel was able to hold his own despite his disadvantage and built a great castle.

Since we didn't have plans on Thursday afternoon we stayed longer at the beach and didn't leave for lunch and the pool until about 1:00. We had beautiful weather, and everyone was having a great time.

After lunch and a break from the sun, we took the kids back to the beach for a couple of hours that afternoon. They had been asking to rent an ocean kayak, so we spent the afternoon riding that. 

Matt's parents were kind to keep the kids for us on Thursday night, so Matt and I could get a date night. We had planned to go to a favorite restaurant in Pensacola for the evening that Matt frequented when he was working in the area in 2010, but unfortunately, it had closed. We still drove over to Pensacola (We both enjoy the scenic drive) and ate at the Fish House. The weather was beautiful, so we ate outside overlooking the bay and enjoyed some kid free, adult conversation. 

Afterward, we stopped at Culvers in Navarre for dessert. 

Friday morning was our last beach day, and unfortunately there was some rough surf that day. Eventually, the life guards changed the flags to double red flags and closed the water for swimming. Before the change, we tried to play in the ocean for a little while, but the breaking waves were so tall, none of us had much success riding them. 

Instead, we spent a lot of time on the sand that day.

The kids took turns burying each other.

And then the boys built a sweet treats shop for Elisabeth, complete with a counter and chair for her. Their creativity shines at the beach, and it's one of my favorite things about vacations with them. 

After lunch, we decided to be done with the beach for the day, and took the kids to a park. We have a very favorite park in Navarre, that is full of sweet memories, and we visit it every trip. We were so disappointed when we drove past it on our way to our condo our first day to find that it had been demolished and was being turned into a parking lot.

We settled for a closer park in Fort Walton Beach to visit, and the kids still had a great time, but I'll always miss that pirate ship park with the swings overlooking the bay. 

After the playground, Matt wanted to take the kids to the mall. That's been another tradition for us, but last trip, I was underwhelmed with it. It's a dying mall, and lots of things were closed because of Covid. Matt said it was tradition though, so we had to go, ha!

We were all happy to see that they had reopened the playground. The kids had a ball playing there. I kept thinking the boys would be getting too big to enjoy it, but all four of them had a blast playing "under the sea."

I made Nathan and Katherine recreate the picture from our visit in 2018. 

Babies don't keep. Those kids are growing up so fast!

After the mall, we headed to Sonny's for dinner (another of our favorites from Matt's work days a decade ago), and then headed back to the condo to pack up for the trip home. The kids didn't know (well, they might have had suspicions), but Matt and I had one more surprise up or sleeve before the official end of our vacation. 

Beach Vacation, Part 2

 Tuesday morning we were back at the beach bright and early. Katherine attacked the snack bag early that morning. 

We spent another amazing morning swimming, boogie boarding, reading, snacking, and sand building. 

Katherine asked to be buried in the sand. 

We followed our usual schedule- beach in the morning, then pool and lunch, then an outing. For our outing on Tuesday, we took a dolphin cruise. We had some extra time to kill at the harbor before our cruise, so we shopped for a Christmas ornament and took a picture with parrots. 

 

Then we boarded our dolphin cruise.

Eight years ago on our first vacation, we took a dolphin cruise and had a not great experience. Nathan got sea sick and threw up all over Matt. So, it wasn't the best experience. But we did see lots of dolphins- like a whole pod (dozens) swimming right up by the boat. I say that because we might have had too high of expectations this time around (not with the sea sickness but with the number of dolphins we expected to see). The boat ride was fun, and the kids loved it, but we only saw a couple of dolphins, and they were pretty far away.

The best part of the cruise was at the very end when a dolphin came and swam right up next to the boat and followed us for a long time. That was fun to see!

After the boat ride, we headed to dinner at Bubba Gumps in Destin. Sweet Katherine had too busy of a day and snoozed while we waited for our table. Goodness, I'm going to miss those sweet sleepy vacation naps when she gets older. 

Wednesday morning, Matt took another trip to the Donut Hole for us. Yum!

After breakfast we walked down to the beach for another great day. 

I adore Katherine's joyful personality at the beach (and every other day too).

Samuel and Elisabeth had their own sand baking competition on Wednesday. They set up all the supplies in the middle and each created their treats on boogie boards. 

They did a great job!

Matt and I enjoyed some relaxing lounge time while they competed. 

One of my favorite moments from our trips occurred because of those rain clouds in the previous pictures. A storm moved into the area, and it started raining. Matt and I both thought it would be a quick moving storm, so we decided to ride it out and wait for it to pass instead of packing up and going back to the condo. Well, it wasn't a quick moving storm. It started raining harder. We decided to go into the water to ride out the rain, and the six of us swam out in the ocean. It was raining harder, and we were all pretty miserable and wishing we had gone inside instead of waiting out the storm. But as we were floating in the water we saw dolphins swimming just a few hundred yards away. They stayed in the area for a long time and we saw a pod of probably a half dozen dolphins swimming with us. We stayed out watching them jump and swim around, and it was a precious memory that our whole family got to experience. Even Katherine was able to spot them. So, so cool! And then the rain moved out, and there were clear skies again and we continued with our beach day. 

 I kept thinking that if it hadn't been storming, we all would have been on the shore playing in the sand instead of out in the water. We wouldn't have seen them. It took a storm for us to experience such beauty. What a reminder for life, right?!?

We ended our beach day a little early on Wednesday because we had an afternoon appointment for parasailing, so we headed back into Destin for a fun adventure. 

Katherine was too little to parasail, but she enjoyed riding in the boat, and she's counting down the years until they'll let her fly in the sky like the rest of us. 

We enjoyed the views and the wind and the beauty of the beach while we were flying high in the sky. 

So much fun!

After parasailing, we spent some time at the pool and then headed out to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. It was another fabulous vacation day.