Ahhh Vacation!

I can't believe how behind I am on getting our vacation recorded! What a great 5 days at the beach! I do have to say how much I love Gulf Shores beach. The sand is so white, the water was perfect and there are some great places to stay. They also have a great Tanger Outlet mall minutes from the beach!
The girls loved the beach just as I knew they would! Parker was in heaven in a giant sandbox. Taylor became a little fish swimming with her floaties on with her cousins Myla and Jack.
The sun was pretty strong. I thought the 90 spf I bought would be sufficient for my pale children and my husband, but that proved wrong after day 1! I headed out to Target (a Target with palm trees) to get them swim shirts and an spf 110. I know it really doesn't matter after 50 anyway, but I thought well it has to be somewhat stronger? My only beef with the whole thing is that even when they have sunscreen on the sun just wipes them out and they were tired girls! They both napped twice a day almost and slept a full night too! Mommy really wanted her beach and sun time, but it was only for a couple hours at a time. Daddy did his golfing the first two days, so by the third day I had to get out to the pool with my kindle alone! Taking kids on a beach vacation is pretty hard work....lugging beach bags, towels, floats, umbrellas, coolers...and all for two hours! Ugh... Its a good thing we had grandparents with us...lol! It was nice to have the extra set of hands, not to mention we had a peaceful 12 hour drive alone on the way there because they rode down with Mawmaw and Pawpaw! It was also so much fun to go with another family. Jason's aunt, uncle, cousins and kids went and stayed in the condo next door. It was so nice to have a full kitchen, laundry, 3 bathrooms etc. We made dinners and all ate toghether right there, Italian night, Mexican night, and BBQ night. We only left the resort once to eat out and do some driving. Its really the way to go!
I can't say how nice it is to spend a whole week together and have so much fun with the kids, but I can say how depressing it is to come home and go back to reality! It really makes you think about what you do every day and think about how much time you spend with your kids. Time goes by so fast and if you don't enjoy what you do you can look back years later and feel like its all been wasted! I know I take alot of pictures, but one of the reasons I take so many is that I feel like there are so many moments that I want to capture and remember forever and if you don't have a picture, you may forget! I took over 400 pictures and I plan to look back on all of them and remember our great vacation!
Here are some of my fav pics. There was no way I could post them all!