Beach Trip 08'!

Wow...I can't believe I'm just now posting about our beach trip! I guess I'm still in "catch-up" mode. We went to Orange Beach, Alabama on July 6th, this is probably our favorite beach to visit as a family because it's not too crowded, it's a beautiful beach, and we feel like it's "our's"?? LOL I guess I feel this way because my family has been going to Gulf Shores/Orange Beach for as long as I can remember. Yes, we've visited a lot of other beaches, but this one is always nice. Not too many teens partying, some of our favorite restaurants, and again, not too terribly crowded. And, did I mention, the beach is beautiful!! It's white sand, the water is usually a pretty shade of green, and the beach is big!! You don't just walk out of your condo and BAM, there's the water. You walk out of your condo/house, and walk across A LOT of sand before hitting the water....which I like!

Like I said, my family/friends have been going there since I was a little girl, and once Brian and I got married, we started going there a lot too because we only lived about 4 1/2 hrs from it. Then we moved to Maryland, and didn't get to go for about 5 years! I was missing it. East Coast beaches are great, but they don't have the white sand, and pretty water I was used to. When we finally got to return last year, several of our favorite restaurants weren't there....because of a couple of hurricanes that got rid of them. But we found new restaurants that were great, so we're happy!

We went a couple of times last year, once with my family, and once with our friends and their children, both times we had a blast! But this year, we went, just the 3 of us. It was awesome! We got out to the beach early in the morning, came in for lunch, went to the pool, went back out to the beach, went back to the pool, went to dinner each night around 8pm. We had no time table, no schedule, just relaxed fun!

Nathan LOVED it!! He was tall enough this year to walk in the big pool's shallow end. His head was just above the water, so he bounced and tried to swim..... a lot! He didn't meet a stranger, he asked every kid in the pool what their name was. He made several friends. He still loved the sand, we built up a big mound of sand, that he played in every day. He made tunnels in it, drove his boat through it, he played for hours on this mound of sand. He had a blast!

He also had a great time jumping the waves this year, and playing football and baseball on the beach!


We ate at The Fish Camp, Lulu's, The Crab Trap, and Tacky Jack's.....all were great!! I was in need of some fried crab claws, and I would say Lulu's had the best this year!

The day we left we told Nathan we would stop at The Wharf and let him ride the big ferris wheel, he had been asking to do this everytime we saw it. We got there and it was closed that day for maintanance!!!! He was not happy!!! So we got him some dippin' dots, and that made him happy again! :-) He cried and cried when we left, he kept saying, "I wanna go back to the beach"! So we must go again really soon!! I'm so happy that he loves the beach as much as we do.

We had a wonderful trip, perfect weather, met a wonderful family from Tennessee, and we can't wait to go again!

Nathan would crash during dinner from playing so hard every day! :-)

I really need to figure out "picaso". For some reason I can't get it to download on my computer, but that way I could make these pics look better, instead of them being so spaced out??? Any suggestions???