Beach Vacation

We just returned from a fabulous beach vacation! We headed down to the beach after work two Fridays ago to spend a week at my parents' house in Oran.ge Beach. We couldn't have asked for more wonderful weather or a better place to stay!

We were truly able to unwind, enjoy the water, sand, and sun without all of the crowds that are there in the summertime. We went out to dinner as a family {during which our children were exceptionally well-behaved--hooray!} and enjoyed lovely Nick-grilled dinners at home, too.

Carter and Callen LOVED it! I made a $1.30 purchase at Tar.get before we left to try to contain our youngest...as she doesn't like to stay in her float in the pool and tries to climb out. This is the two of them testing it out our first day in the sun.

Because of his swimming lessons, Carter was able to swim in the pool with no bubble or floaties. He did AMAZINGLY well. It is crazy how quickly they can become adept swimmers at that age!

Little Miss would wear herself out swimming, splashing, crawling, walking...really doing just about anything that she could to prevent sitting still. A couple of days we couldn't even feed her lunch before her nap...she just fell asleep and wanted to snooze {so we fed her when she woke up--don't worry, we didn't starve her!}

The louvered panels that you see in the picture below are the "walls" of an outdoor shower. We decided to introduce our children to it this trip, so after swimming, we'd just bathe them in the shower and then head inside all clean. Well, the water from the shower tends to pool and it helps keep the deck cleaner if you push the water towards the drain in the concrete. After a couple of evening showers and watching my pushing the water, Carter wanted to help clean the deck!

There was lots of brother/sister love and play time as they didn't have their usual complement of friends {during the day at school}. It was really fun to see them play together...Callen crawling after Carter and taking {and ignoring} instruction from him, mostly. They really do love each other, and it makes my heart melt.

Callen had really started to do some walking. She doesn't like to walk all the time; particularly, if she needs to get somewhere in a hurry, but she is pretty good at it now. Of course, Carter felt the need to encourage her.

My parents came down on Thursday night, so we were able to enjoy some time with them also before heading back to Birmingham!

What a great way to end our summer!