Beach = My Happy Place

The beach is my happy place.  We are blessed to be able to get to go 2 times a year and I love it.  This post is way over due, but we have been trying to get into a routine with pre-school and general life since we got back from the trip.

At the end of July we headed down to Indian Pass Beach (just outside of Port St. Joe and Cape San Blas) with my side of the family.  We usually go in October so we were curious if the beach would be as empty and IT WAS.  It's incredible down there.  They call it the forgotten coast for a reason.  The beaches are flat, we can walk right out on them and there were only a handful of people surrounding us for what felt like miles.

The only downside to where we go is that we stay close to where the river meets the ocean so the water is a little murky.  And I don't get in water that I can't see to the bottom of!  But we enjoyed walking on the beach, playing in the sand, fishing, and Monkey enjoyed playing in the ocean and riding the waves with her cousins.  One day, Chad and Bird found a great swimming spot on the end of the Cape so we all packed up one evening after naps and headed over there.  The water was clear and the beach was really cool.  They had cut down a bunch of trees and just left the stumps around on the beach.  We all got out and floated and the girls enjoyed riding some waves.  Then we threw on cover ups and headed to dinner.  It was a great spot!

It rained a lot of the time we were there, but we had a couple of screened porches and it just forced us inside to learn some new games and work puzzles.  We played many rounds of Tenzi, Farkle, Disney Eye Found It and a few others.  We also worked two 500 piece puzzles while we were there.  Lots of family time inside and we really enjoyed our week there!

Here are some pictures of the week.  I didn't get a ton because it was so cold in the house and so humid outside that it took the camera forever to acclimate!

This one loved playing in the sand, didn't care for the ocean except for the one clear day and once she was ready to go inside, she let us know!

She turned into a fish this summer.  She started swimming in the pool, but still needed her puddle jumper in the ocean.  She LOVED playing in the waves.

Bub did a lot of fishing during the week and even caught some fish for our dinner from right in front of the house.  Goose loved fishing with him and she caught a few herself.

This one had teeth.... YUCK!

She has gotten old quick.  The poses from this child.  I cannot handle it...

The rain that came in most days sure brought beautiful clouds with is...

Monkey got in on the fishing action the first day

Uncle Chad let her help reel the fish in.

Here she is with the fish that she helped catch!

JuJu even got out in the murky water to play with the girls.

This is the really cool swimming spot.  You can see the tree stumps around...

With the trees we felt like we were in a completely different spot from the house.  It was a really neat spot to swim.  Uncle Chad and the girls kept diving and finding hermit crabs of all sizes.

Lil Bit got out there and floated on this day and she loved it!  As long as you didn't get a crab too close to her.

Working on one of the puzzles that we did tha week.

Here is one of the puzzles that we finished.  It was so fun!  Now to find a spot for a puzzle table in our house!