Beach Pictures 2023

 Our annual beach pictures turned out great this year! The kids keep growing and getting bigger. They are also tremendously more cooperative with posing. 

Elisabeth wants this to be our Christmas car pic!

Ft. Walton Beach 2023, Part 3

 Friday was filled with more hole digging. 

And some wave riding

And some sand baking and sand castle building. 

I think the kids were missing a rainy beach day, and they asked to stay in the condo on Friday afternoon and play games instead of heading back down to the beach. We played code names and Seven Wonders. 

Then we went to dinner at Burrito Del Sol. Eating there has been an annual tradition for years, but each year we're a little less impressed. This might have been our last year to eat there.

Another annual tradition is visiting the local mall. Every year we go we notice that the mall is slowly dying more and more, but we still go every year just for tradition's sake, ha! This year Claire's was having a big sale and Elisabeth had some birthday cash burning a hole in her pocket, so she and Katherine were very pleased with our decision to visit the mall. 

Afterward, we played one more round of Goofy Golf on the trip. The skee ball hole is my favorite!

On the drive home, Elisabeth made up the perfect song to thank her dad for all the donut trips he took during the week.

Katherine tried on all her Claires' purchases when we made it home. 

Saturday morning was filled with goodbyes

First to my favorite donuts.

And then to the beautiful beach that gave us such a wonderful week.

The kids spent Saturday doing all the things they had to do before we said goodbye to the beach. 

Katherine needed to be buried.

Cute cousins! Abby wasn't a huge fan of the beach, so they didn't get to spend a ton of time together during the week. 

The kids rode the waves for a final time. 

We also rented a kayak for a while on Saturday. 

And Samuel realized he hadn't built enough sand castles for the week, so he built one more.

And then destroyed it. 

Katherine's joy when playing in the waves is one of my favorite things. 

I'll miss these perfect beach days. 

When we asked the kids if there was anything in particular they wanted to do during our beach week, Samuel asked to walk around HarborWalk Village, so we spent Saturday afternoon doing that. He never asks for much, so we made sure to make it happen (even though it's not our favorite thing to do). 

We also let the kids choose dinner for the night. No one was surprised that they chose Culvers. 

After dinner we drove back to the condo, finished packing, and Matt and I squeezed in one more walk on the beach. The next morning, we drove back home to Oklahoma full of memories and some left-over sand.