Vacation-Week 3-The Beach

This was beach week. We left on Sunday, July 6th and spent the night in Hattiesburg, MS with my entire immediate family (15 in all to be exact). It was my family (4), my parents (2), my sister and her family (5), and my brother and his family (4). We all met in Hattiesburg and then caravanned (sp?) on Monday to Gulf Shores, AL. For those of you wondering where Gulf Shores is located, it is on the far eastern side of Alabama, minutes from the Florida state line.

My entire family went to Gulf Shores 3 years ago and decided to do it again this summer. We added two more to the family since last time!! We had two 3 BR/2 bath condos for us all that were right next door to one another. We arrived Monday afternoon and after settling in we immediately went to the beach.

My kids LOVED the beach. They loved the sand, the waves, everything. Our days consisted of beach, eat lunch, beach, nap, dinner, beach. Doesn’t that sound like fun? We ate in once and ate out the rest of the week.

One night each individual family went out alone. Our family chose a place called The Hangout. It was very close to our condo and it looked like a neat place to eat. They had a huge sand pile for kids to play on while the parents waited for their food. They also had a band that played. I got a t-shirt for both me & Anna (they were cute) and now she wants to work at The Hangout when she grows up. She thought that was the neatest place ever!!

While at The Hangout, Ken & I placed our order and told the kids they could go play until our food came out. We could see them playing the entire time. Once I looked out, and I see several kids at the end of a tunnel raking some sand. I could only see the top of Layne’s hair and I could see Anna pushing sand around. I made a comment to Ken about wondering what they were doing. At that time, Anna comes running toward us. Come to find out, a kid jumped off the tunnel at the same time that Layne was exiting the tunnel. Layne bit the dust in the sand. He had sand ALL OVER HIM. He had gotten some in his mouth and it caused him to gag and throw up. They were trying to cover up his vomit in the sand!!!! Oh, well. He got cleaned up and went right back out. Kids are so resilient.

We went to a local go-cart place twice while we were there that week. Layne absolutely LOVES go-carts. This place had three different tracks we could ride. He was in heaven.

We had an awesome week. We thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with everyone. We left on Saturday morning and headed to Tyler, TX. One of my best friends, Beth, lives there and we stayed the night with her. We left on Sunday back to Abilene. We were gone for 24 days…and we did A LOT in those 24 days.