Sweet Beaches in July

Day after the wedding we went on vacation!

To the Gulf of Mexico.  Oh how we have missed visiting those beautiful beaches each summer since moving to Washington.  I was at first against the idea because I knew that taking Tesa and Tyce would not be any fun.  Who wants to spend a week keeping babies from eating sand and throwing it in each others' eyes??  Then my Mom, angel that she is, and crazy that she is, offered to keep the twins while we took the big boys to the beach.  We took her up on the offer and headed out with Brian, Kimberly, Brandon and Taylor for a family vacation adventure.  Granna and Paw even joined us for part of the trip.  

Here are the pictures of our fun.....

 Road-trippin' Ryne!

 We made it to the beach!!!

Navarre Beach to be exact!

 Look who came to see us there!

Amanda and her sweet girls Brooke, Raelyn and Natalie made a road trip to see us while we were on their side of the country.  They were great friends of ours from when we first moved to WA...then the army moved them.  So glad we've been able to stay in touch with them and getting to see them was AWESOME!

 Ryne and Raelyn buried in the sand.

 Kyle took a turn getting buried.

 Having so much fun can really wear a kid out....

 Brooke

 Kade and Brandon waiting to go to dinner.

 Ryne could barely stay awake going to dinner.

 Brooke joined the Stewart side of the table for dinner so that Taylor could play with her hair.

Next day it was back to the beach...

 Taylor taking it easy.

 Look at Kade's cheeks getting red.

 Sand castle building fun

 Ta Da

 Raelyn and Ryne got buried again.

 This time I decided to take a turn...

 Figured out it was the only way to actually take a break on the beach.  As long as Ryne was busy burying me and Kyle had Kade then I could relax for a moment.  Boy do I look forward to having the kind of beach vacation that I really miss again one day.  Napping, book reading, sipping a cold green tea, strolling along the water's edge looking for shells.  Maybe 20 years from now I can do that again.  For now, I'll just choose to enjoy the not so relaxing fun....except when I can manage to convince Ryne to bury me.

 Kade caught this in the ocean.

 A pipefish that he named Mr. Squiggles

 Ryne thought it was cool.  We kept it in a bucket of water for the day and released him back to the ocean before we headed out that evening.

 Back at the condo, the kids acted as if they hadn't been in the water all day.

 The pool was a big hit!

 Kyle and I watched from the balcony since the other grown ups offered to keep an eye on our tots.

 Not only could we see the pool from our balcony, but we also had a nice view of the bay.

 Made for some nice sunset views that week.

Ryne had a bit too much sun and wasn't feeling super great so on Day 3 he and I took a beach break.

 And had a frozen yogurt date!

 Then we went souvenir shopping.

Ryne picked out the cool necklace he's wearing.

On our way back we felt bad that Kade missed out on our fun so to go with the cool necklace that we picked out for him we stopped and picked up some lobster bisque from the restaurant that we had eaten at the first night. 

 He had been pleading to have more of that lobster bisque.

 Yep, we made him a happy boy!

Next came more beach...

 And more pool...

 Looks like somebody was in trouble.

 Yep, there he is in time-out.

 Kade playing "shark."

 Ryne playing peek-a-boo.

 Practicing with no floaties in the deep end.

 

See how many times we can get Dad to catapult us into the water....

 

 Brandon making a leap on his own.

Then we got to celebrate the 4th of July...

 Having dinner here...

 Granna, Paw and Aunt Rena joined us for the Fourth of July festivities.

 It was good times.

 It did feel weird that we missed Tesa and Tyce's first 4th of July and I almost didn't even want to take this picture of the four of us because it just didn't feel right.

 Kade and Ryne enjoyed watching the crabs.

 Kade even got to order up crab as his meal for the very first time.

 Few places have crab on the kiddie menu.

 These boys were happy with their seafood feasts.

After dinner we hit the beach for fireworks...
 

  Sweet Taylor

 These silly boys had a dance party while we waited for the show.

 Maybe he finally tired out?  Probably not...most likely he just fell down.

 We got to see a really cool moonset.  

Wish my camera would have taken a better picture of it.  It truly was amazing.

 We were having so much fun with this crew that we didn't want it to end.

But how does the saying go, "all good things must come to an end."  Not sure that I entirely buy into that but it was the case for us this time.

We had one last day at the beach....

 These boys had surely reached their sun limit so they sported shirts and hats for their final day at the beach.

Washed the ocean off of us and headed back toward Pensacola to pick up Granna and Paw.

Bye Bye beach.

 Kade requested the camera in the backseat so that he could take pictures of everything as we drove away from the beach because he didn't want to forget about any of it.  He happened to also snap this picture of me spying on him. Ha!

  Stopped at Flounder's to have dinner.

 Kade had flounder chowder and said it was super delicious.

 Ryne slept through all of dinner and woke up hours later wanting to know when he was going to have supper.  Poor guy, he was exhausted.

 It was a good exhausted though, I'm sure.

It was a fun trip and we are so glad that we got to spend some time with these awesome people...

 Brian and Kimberly...thanks for putting up with us for a week.  I know we are crazy, even when it is only four of the six of us. Thanks for the memories!

Speaking of memories.  Kyle had been talking about eating at Waffle House since the very first day of our trip.  We hadn't been able to make it happen.  So on our trip back to Arkansas we were sure to make a stop.

Kade and Ryne's first Waffle House experience.

Kade may not have looked like a very happy camper in that first picture but after he had a taste of this chocolate chip waffle he was a whole new critter!

So glad my boys got some Waffle House!  I enjoyed it too.

It was a super fun trip but I was way ready to make it back to Junction City to get these guys...

 They spent the week hanging out in C.G.'s world.

Don't you just love how their pool from the "water park" (see post about June in Arkansas) turned into their playpen at the flower shop?!  Mom, you are awesome!  Thanks so much C.G. and Grandaddy for keeping these silly little babies so we could enjoy our week at the beach.  

Took all night to get us repacked so we could catch our plane in Little Rock early the next morning.  And I'm not kidding. All. Night.  What else would you expect. We did get there on May 31st and it was now July 6th.  That's a lot of time for things to get scattered about.  

And just like that our whirlwind blew right back to Washington.

Stay tuned to see what the summer in WA had in store for us.