The Beach!

This summer we took our first ever vacation that wasn't to visit someone. It was just for us. We'd been talking about it since last summer and finally made it happen this year. We stayed at a condo right on St. Simons beach for three nights and loved it.  The kids were in heaven and I'd say completely exhausted the majority of our trip (as was I). Most of our time was spent playing in the sand and the waves, although we did find a pretty awesome pizza place one night. 

Juliann and Jackson shared a bed and slept so well except for one night when I got up to check on the kids and saw that Jackson wasn't in his bed. I searched all over the whole condo three times and didn't see him anywhere! When I had finally entered full panic mode, I woke Doug up telling him Jackson was missing. I was very close to busting out the door and notifying the police, fire department and the coast guard to begin a full on search for the little guy. But of course, Doug found him under the foot of our bed. Hey, why not, right? Apparently he needed to go potty and decided instead of waking us up, he'd lie in agony under our bed watching his mother frantically running around in the dark calling his name. It made for quite an exciting night.

Doug and the kids worked very hard on a super awesome sand castle. We're talking super impressive here, complete with a bridge and everything. Jackson kept asking if it was time to smash it yet and kept being told no, not yet, over and over again. Doug made sure I got about 15 pictures of each side and corner, and then we went to go play in the water again. When we looked back up at the masterpiece, we saw Jackson standing on top of a huge pile of sand-- and no more sandcastle. Classic Jackson. 

Yet another story about Jackson being Jackson. We walked along a rocky beach by the park one morning and found all kinds of little treasures including a tiny crab. Jackson was enamored. We kept walking down the beach as he stayed behind and held and poked and played with that poor little thing- until we heard crying. We looked back to find Jackson with tears streaming down his face, screaming that the crab had pinched him. He had bothered that little dude to the point that he had had enough, and let Jack know it. Like a true little boy though, I'm sure he'll want to hold the next one he finds too. 

Juliann made a little friend named Riley one day at the beach. This little girl was hilarious. She was just as country as country can be and told us in her cute little twang all kinds of tall tales about how she swam all the way out to the boats in the distance and kissed dolphins. She definitely made for an interesting day and was the perfect playmate for Juliann. They helped each other hop in the little inflatable raft over and over again, riding the waves.  

Here are more pictures:

There was a really awesome park close to where we were staying. It had a fun playground for the kids, and a beautiful lighthouse you could climb up if you felt like taking a million and a half stairs (which I didn't).

There were these beautiful huge trees everywhere down there covered in spanish moss. The branches would grow out so far and get so thick to where they sometimes touched the ground and then started growing back up again. Perfect, I mean perfect climbing trees. The kids loved them. Juliann really wanted Doug to help her hang on to one of the branches, but she wasn't too happy when he tried to let go:

Our last day at the beach was an interesting one. It had been gray and cloudy all morning and by the time we got to the beach we could tell the rain was definitely coming. No question about it. We unpacked our stuff anyway and watched down the beach as the sky grew darker and it was clear that it was pouring, not even a few miles away. Everyone around us was packing up their things and heading back to their cars. We weren't sure what to do. We didn't want to miss out on our last day at the beach just because of some silly rain. As we contemplated whether or not we should make a run for it, a pot bellied red neck (it was actually Riley's dad) with a beer in his hand said, "You might as well just stay right here in the water cuz we're about to get REEEEAL wet." And sure enough with in a minute or so we were pelted with cold rain drops. But it didn't feel like rain drops. And "pelted" is not a strong enough word. It felt like someone was shooting marbles at us. I yelled for the kids and covered them with our soaking wet, sandy beach towels. Doug grabbed all our things in one fell swoop and we took off running. (Well, "running" when you're 35 weeks pregnant may not look like running. But I was hightailing it out of there.) Of course by the time we drug ourselves and our stuff all the way back up to the car the rain had slowed down quite a bit. It was no longer like marbles, much more like actual rain drops now. We decided we'd risk it and just try to stay. We walked back down and set up our soggy stuff once again. We basically had the entire beach to ourselves. (Plus Riley and her redneck mama and daddy, who we actually really enjoyed talking with later.) It was a good decision to stay. The waves were HUGE from the storm. Doug was in heaven riding the waves with his boogie board. We ended up staying for hours. And right as we were getting ready to leave we noticed there were seashells galore all over the edge of the water. We combed the beach back and forth and found all kinds of beautiful shells and sand dollar pieces. It was an awesome last day. On the ride home this was a common sight: