Alright, so sorry about the blogging break, we went on vacation at the end of September/beginning of October, and we have been going nonstop since getting back. So, here is the post about our wonderful vacation!
We rented a beach house with Kira and Andrew in Gulf Shores, AL. Grant and I had played with the idea of going to an all inclusive resort,but this just happened to work out and was a lot cheaper. We budgeted a lot extra in advanced to make sure we didn’t worry about going over budget on this vacation. This was our first vacation since our honeymoon 5 years ago, and we wanted to really enjoy it and relax.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon after Kira and Andrew,but for us it was around a 5 hour drive which really wasn’t bad.
Here is the view off of our deck.
The other side.
Alana looked so funny in the wrap.
Even though we went in the beginning of October, the weather was perfect, and lots of pretty wild life!
The sunsets were beautiful!
To us at least, Alana was just a laid back baby, and we honestly didn’t notice her being there. We never heard her while we slept, and it was a lot of fun having her there!
Kira and Andrew are PROS at having a beach vacation! Here you can see Andrew setting up all of their gear!
Alana in her princess tent and swing.
The yellow house on the right is the one we rented.
We mainly chilled on the beach, the guys played video games inside sometimes, read books, played games, talked, or napped.
Grant took this picture of Kira and it looked like it should be a Kindle
Sleeping in the awesome weather.
A really cute picture of Alana before we were getting ready to go on a walk.
Kira was walking for a while like this without realizing that Alana’s face was completely covered by the bill of her hat. 🙂
So we fixed it.
All of the muscles or clams before they dug themselves into the sand.
We saw this guy, and couldn’t figure out what he was doing.
Then he showed us he was getting bait for fishing.
Ghost shrimp.
Andrew throwing rocks.
A lot of fishermen were out, it reminded Kira and I of fishing with our dad while growing up.
An awesome short Grant got of this bird with a fish in it’s mouth.
A beautiful bird by the water.
Here is the guy who was getting the ghost shrimp before, but he caught a sting ray.
I never realized they had such beady eyes.
He had to pull it on shore so he could get the hook out.
Andrew helped him hold down the tail to make sure they weren’t hurt.
Time to turn him over and get him back in the water.
He stopped really close to the shore, and we didn’t want someone to step on him.
So he pushed him away again.
He was not happy,but away he went into deeper water.
There was an air force base nearby and some of the days there were planes out doing maneuvers.
A small crab.
Alana just sleeping.
Some of the flight patterns in the air from the air planes.
The air planes went REALLY high.
The birds hanging out.
This orange bill really stood out to me.
Kira and I took turns making breakfasts and lunches which we planned in advanced, and then we would go out to a new restaurant each night for dinner which was a lot of fun.
Some of the time I would stay inside with Alana while she slept, and then Kira and Andrew got a break.
Kira thought it was funny how much sunscreen we put on,but we were not about to get burnt on our vacation!
It was so nice outside and so beautiful.
One of the days it stormed.
Taking pictures while it rained.
Rain.
The birds all buckling down because of the wind.
We played the Game of Thrones Board Game
It was kinda cool how the horizon line was lost during the storm.
While playing the board game, Andrew thought it was hilarious that I was a ruthless board game player even toward Grant. I blame Oma who taught us from a young age to show no mercy while playing Mensch ärger Dich Nicht.
Breakfast.
We tried to get some family pictures, and these two were great because Alana was smiling in both!
Kira wanted Andrew to hold up Alana and doing a loving look up, but Andrew decided that the Lion King pose was much better.
Group Photo!
Sand, Sand EVERYWHERE!
We introduced Kira and Andrew to one of our favorite games Pandemic
Alana and I just hanging out.
We ate at King Neptune’s which had pretty good food, and we had a horrible sushi experience,but we have some fun memories from it I guess.
We met our friends Andrew and Amanda at LuLu’s restaurant since they happened to be in Gulf Shores at the same time we were, so this took this picture for us.
We went to Gelato Joe’s for the Gelato, only to eat dinner and be too full for the Gelato that had such great reviews…FAIL.
We ate at Lambert’s Restaurant which had a great atmosphere, and it had some of the best food of all of the places we tried.
As we were leaving, we stopped at the shrimp basket which was also phenomenal, their crab cakes and coconut shrimp were soo good.
An awesome video Andrew made.
We left right before the hurricanes came into the area so the timing and weather was perfect for our stay. Thanks Kira and Andrew for doing so much of the planning since you two are pros!
We had a wonderful vacation, and it was so nice to be there with Kira, Andrew, and Alana. It was so needed, even if it was hard to get back into the swing of everyday life when we returned.
