apple red happiness: We're back!!

Over the last week, we packed up our little car,

dropped our daughters off at their Gram and Pop's,

and drove all the way to Pensacola Beach.

Three full days of sitting at the beach!

We were giddy, and exhausted,

looking forward to a restful get away.

We drove through Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama.

We saw cotton fields for the first time,

swamps, and the USS Alabama.

We suffered through miles and miles on tiny one lane highways,

passing farm after farm
after farm after farm.
We talked and asked each other lots of questions,
it was weird with no one yelling in the back seat.
We listened to our music and some comedians too!
After 13 long hours, we made it,
checked in, and crashed.

The next morning we woke up early,
ate a scrumptious hotel breakfast, and walked along the beach.
It was cool and cloudy,
we couldn't believe we were there.
Really, it took about 1 1/2 days to get into vacation mode.
I joke about parenting other people's children while I was there,
and sadly it was a little true,
I was not used to being off mom mode for more than a few hours!

But once we got into the vacation lifestyle,
we lived it up, hours on the beach, yummy restaurants,
and we even rented beach chairs on Thursday.
We felt fancy, and had a blast people watching, reading,
and taking breaks from sitting to search for shells and sand dollars
to give to the girls.
The weather was gorgeous!
Sunny, high in the 70s and a nice breeze.
Ahh, the life.

Thursday night, we paid for a walking pass on the pier.
We watched the sunset,
took pictures, and saw a pod of dolphins!
There were a myriad of fishermen,
it was fun watching them toss fish over the side of the pier,
smack them on the ground, making an art out of their work.
It was so peaceful watching God's glory set on the horizon.
(more pictures to come later of this adventure)

Friday was great/terrible.
We followed our usual routine,
we had grown accustomed to relaxing,
and we liked it.
After a few minutes on the sand,
we got pretty hot and headed into the water.
A girl asked us if we were brother and sister,
which Levi began nodding his head yes.
Another girl told me about her crabs at home,
Freddie and Mr. Spongebob Krabbs.
It was cute and made me miss my girls even more.

While looking for shells,
we found numerous tiny crabs still in their shells drifting along with the waves.
I was a little creeped out, and began walking so cautiously around.
Then I spotted it, a perfect sand dollar, white, that was the size of a half dollar,
(we had only found pieces, many pieces of sand dollars, no whole ones,
we joked about us vacationing to a "sand dollar graveyard",
it was funny to me, maybe you had to be there)
I bent down to pick it up and found one silver fish with a yellow tail
(if you clicked on the link, I couldn't narrow it down to any specific fish,
because as you can see there are many silver fish with yellow tails)
started swimming all around my legs,
and soon more appeared, really freaking me out,
chasing me away from our perfect sand dollar.
Every step back I took, more appeared,
it was completely irrational, but I thought,
what if they bite?
Shortly after they got tired of scaring me,
someone found a jellyfish nearby.
I was done.

So I parked my keister, do people use that terminology still or is it just me?
Anyway, I sat down to read more,
but it was so hot in the direct sun,
so I moved to the poolside under a free umbrella, and that was nice,
then I started to feel a heat rash,
it burned and itched,
so I went upstairs, showered and took nap,
it finished the trip nicely.

check out the couple walking the beach, so cute!

We headed back,
after a few minor setbacks,
one being my first flat tire,
past the millions of farms,
we made it home to an adorable banner,
and three snoozing loves.