Catch up HERE if you missed the first part of our first family trip to the beach.

Tuesday, October 14th: We started out our 3rd morning with plans to eat at The Donut Hole for breakfast, but on this day the boys actually slept in. We didn’t get there until almost 9 and by then, the line was out the door.  So we went on down the road to The Pancakery, where we quickly discovered that we weren’t going to get immediate seating anywhere.  We decided to wait it out and browse the store next door….where Cute Cute came into our lives.

Once we got seated and ordered our food, I started messing with Dexter’s hair to get it out of his eyes. As you can see, he wasn’t happy until we slicked it all over to the side like… you guessed it… Bruce Wayne.  He’s so silly.

YUM!

After breakfast, I realized that we were pretty close to a couple of other places I had hoped to visit – The Village of Baytowne Wharf and the Disney outlet store (I’d never been to an outlet store before). I fell in love with Baytowne Wharf, it was so cute and colorful.

 A little boo boo briefly interrupted our fun.

We didn’t buy anything but it was fun to look. One of the boys’ favorite things to do at home (and therefore, anywhere) is go to a playground.  A big reason that we wanted to go to Baytowne Wharf was because I read they had an awesome one. Well, they did…or at least it looked like it. But it was closed for repairs. We were so disappointed.  I did a quick search on my phone and found another local park. We didn’t stay for a very long time because it was getting hot and late and we were ready to get back to the room for lunch and then get to the beach. BUT, it sure was different playing on the sand! It felt kind of weird to imagine ourselves as locals, just taking our kids to the playground. Ah, to live at the beach!

It was in the high 70s but the wind was so strong that it felt pretty chilly when you got out of the water.  We got to the beach later this day because of all our morning adventures so the boys were pretty tired. So tired that they both fell asleep right on the beach for an hour or so.  We didn’t have any plan for the evening so we ended up wandering to the fishing pier just in time for sunset.

I think, if my memory serves me, that we ate in our condo that night since we’d gone out for breakfast. I didn’t take any pictures the rest of the night so that’s probably a good guess.  🙂  This was a great day…very laid back and no plan in place, we just wandered from one thing to the next without rushing at all.  So that was Tuesday.

This was our first family vacation, just the four of us. We went to Disney a year earlier, but with 6 other people. That was an amazingly fun vacation, but this was special in it’s own way.  Taking vacations is something that’s a priority to me, for my family. For myself. Some of my favorite and brightest childhood memories are from fun family vacations. I cherish those times – remembering my mom and dad so carefree and happy.  Lots of trips with lots of wandering from thing to thing, never knowing what was in store for us next. Something I don’t think I’ve mentioned here is that my mom, sister (and her family), and me & Ryan all went to this same beautiful area of Florida just 5 months after my Dad died. We couldn’t bear the thought of having a “normal” Christmas at home without him so soon after losing him.  Many sights and sounds reminded me of that time in my life – feeling guilty for being there (and enjoying it) while knowing at the same time that he wouldn’t have wanted us to sit around sobbing because he was gone.  Old memories, new memories. I hope there are lots of family vacations in our future.

More from this trip coming soon.

xo,

~C~