A couple months ago, Amy mentioned that her kiddos hadn't ever been to the beach. This was surprising to me... I forget how spoiled we are to be able to visit the beach whenever we want to! I talked to Danny and his parents, we checked everyone's schedules, and somehow, we found a good chunk of time when everyone could go!
Last week was the big trip! The kids wore the Beach Vacay shirts they made, we loaded the cars, and headed south! We didn't leave till a little after 5 on Wednesday. We stopped for dinner on the way and finally made it to the condo around 10:30. Everyone was so excited, there wasn't going to be any sleeping anytime soon!
The kids colored and the grown-ups snacked. :)
Day 1, Thursday, we spent pretty much the whole day down at the beach. Everyone other than Danny, Ruston, and McKenzie got a little too much sun. :)
Ruston LOVED having other kids there. It's fun to dig and play with us, but he was a whole new level of happy with Kenzie there. Luckily, she was totally into the sand so he had an all day playmate. Tyler seriously only got out of the water when forced. :) He totally fits the Beach Bum label!
We enjoyed having our friends there too!
A little shadow letter art. :)
Day 1 family pic! (This is before my brand new swimsuit broke and had to be tied to stay up. haha)
The Burch family
We finally got the kids to sit still long enough for a picture.
We thought Port Aransas was doing their fireworks show on Saturday. I found a wind sock project on Pinterest and thought it would be fun for the kids to take to the show!
I painted their cans blue and then they used white paint pens to decorate them. They were actually supposed to draw stars (so it would look like a flag), but they went the more creative route. :)
Tyler actually drew a ship on his!
Danny sprayed sealant on them when they were finished, then we left them out to dry overnight!
Day 2, Friday, was field trip day! We headed to Corpus for the aquarium.
You go through a really pretty water wall on the way in, so we stopped for family pictures.
Ruston loves the aquarium. Heck, I do too. It was fun to go with other people and see their kids get excited about the animals too.
They stayed and looked at the hermit crabs for a while, but neither of them ever picked one up.
The guys were good sports and followed us around all morning. :)
Me and my boy!
Tyler and Kenzie with the big fish.
We just missed the dolphin show, but they were still pretty playful right after. We went down into the underwater view room and watched them for a while. They had a big pole the dolphins would grab and carry around and then in the pic, you can see the dolphin dribbling a basketball!
They had quite a few more sea turtles than I remember from our last trip. Two of them kept swimming up right next to us.
The otters kept swimming right up to Tyler and McKenzie. They were both into watching them and had no time to turn around and smile. :)
The otters used to be Ruston's favorite, but he didn't pay as much attention to them this visit. He really liked the dolphins the best this time.
We skipped the splash park this time since we'd been there a while and it was definitely lunch time.
We headed back to Port Aransas and had lunch at Virginia's. We stopped at a little shop for some souvenirs and had to get our picture taken inside the shark!
Once we got back to the condo, a few of us took some naps. Then the guys took the kids down to the beach for a little bit and let Amy and I enjoy some quiet on the balcony. We met them at the pool a little later.
After dinner, we played Hedbanz! It was such a fun game!
You have a picture attached to your headband and you have to ask yes/no questions to figure out what the picture is. Ruston didn't get it. He just said no to every question or told you what you were. haha
Tyler has played the game so many times, he could guess his card with like 2 questions. McKenzie asked some really good questions too!
Day 3, Saturday, started out with rain. :/ We waited until it stopped, then headed down to the beach. The weather was pretty yucky, but it was a nice break from the sun. We had to run into the lobby once when it started pouring, but we had a snack and were able to head right back out.
Ruston got into the ocean way more this trip than ever before. He kept saying he wanted to "swim", meaning he wanted his whole body in the water. It was fine, but my goodness, my arms were getting tired holding him up and then picking him up when each wave came. There were a few minor melt downs when we had to come out for a break.
There were some really nice people next to us that snapped a picture of our group. Wouldn't this be a great picture to take yearly?!?
Jason and Tyler did some sand sculpting. They made one that said Gig 'Em too.
I brought Ruston upstairs to take a nap and finished up the kids' windsocks. They turned out cute and McKenzie was pretty excited about hers. :) They didn't have fireworks planned on Saturday afterall, but at least they had them ready for the 4th of July.
We went back down to the beach after nap for a few minutes and a little more digging.
Then Amy and I took the kids to the pool for a bit while the boys went to the store. We didn't stay long because the wind made it pretty cold.
We ordered pizza for dinner and had a relaxing night playing Phase 10.
Day 4, Sunday, was our last day. :( We had so much fun! Amy got each kid a ring pop, which kept them entertained for a bit so we could start cleaning/packing.
We snapped some pictures of the kids in their beach shirts on the way out.
Ruston is so lucky to have these kiddos as cousins and friends. :)
Ruston conked out pretty quick. I'd say that it was a successful trip. ;)
We had a blast! It was so nice to get away, relax, and have some fun with our friends and kids. It's definitely going to have to be a yearly trip!
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