Okaloosa Island 2014: Part 4

Catch up on the first few days here:

Friday, October 17th: By far the nicest day we had there weather-wise, the skies and water were completely calm. The temp was back into the 80s.  This was the first day that we could go far out into the water, still see our toes, and feel comfortable letting the boys go out of our reach without being afraid that a wave would go over their heads.  Crystal clear water that the Destin area is known for – ahhhh.

Beach, pool, beach, pool, back and forth.  We packed a picnic so we could eat by the pool and spend more of our last full day out in the sun and sand. We were almost always the only ones in the pool or on the pool deck.

10-17-14IMG_4831 10-17-14IMG_4842 10-17-14IMG_4852 10-17-14IMG_4864 10-17-14IMG_4871 10-17-14IMG_4878 10-17-14IMG_4882 10-17-14IMG_4887 10-17-14IMG_4907 10-17-14IMG_4927 10-17-14IMG_4934 10-17-14IMG_4944 10-17-14IMG_4960 10-17-14IMG_4962 10-17-14IMG_4974 10-17-14ss_104857 10-17-14ss_105327Since we didn’t make it to the dolphin cruise in time the night before, we had gone ahead and reserved our spot for Friday night ahead of time.  The cruise was at 5 and we were to arrive 30+ minutes early so that meant we had to end our time on the beach sooner than we wanted in order to be on time.  We were excited for the cruise but already missing the beach and since it was our nicest day all week, we briefly thought about skipping the cruise. So glad we didn’t – turned out to be some of the best memories we made on the entire vacation!

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There were unlimited drinks – wine, beer, soda, and water – on the sunset dolphin cruise.  So we let the boys try Sprite for the first time.  This was Dexter’s reaction: 10-17-14IMG_5014

They both got to captain the boat!

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10-17-14ss_17264010-17-14IMG_5051 10-17-14IMG_5077 10-17-14IMG_5088    10-17-14ss_175918 I didn’t take any pictures of the dolphins we saw – we were so relaxed, just enjoying the wind and the water – and okay, the drinks too.  It was such a fun cruise.  Afterwards, we had a fantastic dinner at LaFamiglia at HarborWalk Village.10-17-14IMG_509410-17-14IMG_5093

Back to the condo to pack and lament over the sad end of a wonderful week.

Saturday, October 18th: Departure Day.  “October 11th through the 18th.” I had said those dates a hundred times when talking to friends, family, and acquaintances about our vacation as it approached.  Now, checkout day was here and I didn’t like the sound of October 18th anymore.  The only picture I took was of the condo before we pulled away.

10-18-14IMG_5102 10-18-14IMG_5104The boys were great in the car – Dexter actually took a long 2 or 3 hour nap.  We drove to my friends’ house in Nashville, TN and crashed for the night.

Sunday, October 19th.  We hit the road early but weren’t quite ready for vacation to end just yet.  I got that “I don’t wanna go home…I wanna DO somethin'” feeling.  The next sign on the side of the interstate as we were approaching Bowling Green, Kentucky said “Lost River Cave & Valley.” I was driving so I told Ryan to look it up on TripAdvisor.  I was an easy sell and quickly pulled off the interstate, changing the destination on our GPS.  What a gem for the people of Bowling Green. I loved the town of BG as we drove through, but this place was so neat. Such a great outdoor space for kids with an all natural playground, fossil and gem mining, trails, cave (with an underground boat tour), and an adorable and impressive gift shop.

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Don’t mind the tantrum…typical.10-19-14IMG_5177 - Copy 10-19-14IMG_5192 - Copy 10-19-14ss_104754 10-19-14ss_114535 10-19-14ss_114558 10-19-14ss_115828Theo did have a massive meltdown at this place over me wanting to take a picture or two…he was beyond tired and not wanting to do anything we asked of him. FUN note to end the vacation on….except not really. We had a heart to heart in the car afterwards, kissed and made up, and made it home in the late afternoon.  With hearts and minds bursting with memories and love and happiness that it happened and sadness that it was over.  Just like every vacation. The end of a week spent as an isolated little unit of 4 people.  If only vacations happened more than once or twice a year.  Work shmerk!

So that’s the end of our Okaloosa Island 2014 series – I hope you have enjoyed and that I’ve talked you into taking a trip there (and to Bowling Green!)…it really was amazing!

xo,

~C~

 

 

 

 

making a change

I had been thinking for a long time about switching from blogger to WordPress but the unknown was what got in the way.  Tuesday, Ryan emailed me around lunchtime. “Hey, what’s wrong with your blog? I wanted to catch up during lunch. All the pictures are missing.” HMMM?  I quickly typed in the web address and sure enough, they were gone. Long gone. Gone with the wind. Goodbye. Adios. I’ll stop there, you get the point. For a few months, I’d been getting warnings every time I logged into Gmail that I was out of storage space and needed to free up space or purchase more. Here’s the thing. Google+.  I don’t remember if I signed up for that or not – or do you just automatically have it when you have other google accounts? It doesn’t matter – my point is that I HAVE NEVER USED Google+ for anything. I have always uploaded photos to my blog either from my memory card or my computer’s desktop.  I don’t really know anything about it. All I know is that Google+ was automatically backing up 343 versions of every photo that I had ever loaded onto my computer, taken with my Android phones, and put on my blog in the last 4 years.  Which added up to about 25,000 photos. So Monday I took some time to delete a few THOUSAND pictures from Google+. It warned me that they would be deleted permanently. From Google+.  Not from my google-driven blog.  So yep, when I started scrolling through my blog, the pictures were…just…gone.  Devastating. All that time. All that effort. Hours upon hours. Luckily, I still have the photos.  And now I have my wordpress blog. I just need my time back. Time to slowly and carefully re-add the photos to this new space and restore what was once something I was proud of and happy with.  So I apologize if you are scrolling through posts here and click on links that go nowhere or find posts with missing photos. I imported all of the content from my old blog and will work on it as I have the time to get all the photos back where they belong. I’m finding that it’s a time-consuming and tedious process. So I’m new at wordpress. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I hope it gets easier. I don’t like change. I don’t really like computers, either. Or having to learn things on them or about them.  Not much of a blogger, am I? ~Candice~