In case you missed it yesterday, check out the first part of recap here.
Confession: I’ve never actually been crab hunting. I usually bail out of this activity, leaving my husband to torture the kids, while I read in bed. There is something about being pregnant again that has made me so much more maternal than usual. A huge part of me thinks it’s completely weird, but the rest of me hopes it will stick around. I opted to tag along and we met my sister and Jennifer at the pier and the let the kids all hunt together.
I have so much video footage from this excursion, that I’ll need to share at some point. The kids were squealing and the daddies were running around trapping crabs with their bare hands. Jennifer and I walked very slow and Kamin kept us company.
At the end of the night, instead of dumping the crabs out around the feet of our kiddos, Josh threw them at me and I screamed like a little girl. This is also captured on video somewhere.
I’m planning to share a comprehensive list of our favorite restaurants next week, but just know that the beignet store is very high on our list. The girls had been begging for them all week, so I ran out and grabbed a dozen, which were quickly inhaled by my family. We’ve noticed that Sophie’s gluten intolerance has been waning over the last few months (this is a major revelation and one I should share in detail later on), so she plowed through three and we prayed she wouldn’t have a bad reaction.
I absolutely HATE that this photo isn’t in focus, because it’s one of my absolute favorites from our trip. She was so cute standing in the shallow water, reading her book! The glare on my camera was awful and I couldn’t squat and look through the viewfinder with this belly, not to mention the concrete deck was so hot that my feet had blisters by the end of the day. Let’s just pretend it’s perfect, okay?
The girls had been asking us for a bike ride all week, but we didn’t squeeze it in until the middle of our second week. One of the things we love most about the recent park renovations, is the huge network of hiking and biking trails. One comes out near the beach highway and we were able to bike to dinner one night, even though it was miserably hot. We packed water bottles and Josh grabbed an extra t-shirt and we biked the almost three miles to dinner.
After our dinner, we took an alternate route back to camp, crossing over the highway for a peek at the bridge and traveling up a huge ramp that nearly killed me. The girls loved the adventure, but the six mile ride almost did me in. I was so sore the next day and didn’t get on another bike the entire week!
This is completely irrelevant to the trip itself, but Sophie has spent this summer learning how to do her own hair. She’s tried ponytails, pigtails, fun buns, top knots — you name it and she’s probably given it a try. She plans to be fully independent when school starts and I have loved watching her practice!
The second Friday of our trip, the daddies decided we should rent a boat and spend the day on the bay. Jennifer & her family had been there the entire second week, but we had a few other friends come into town before the weekend, so we all went in together and rented two boats to share. This was definitely our favorite day of the trip and I’m guessing we’ll never be able to not do it again. We had the best time playing on this little island and the kids caught so many hermit crabs while we were there.
This picture is especially funny to me, because Ella found me this huge shell that did not have a hermit crab inside! She carried it around all morning and then it hung out in my bag until we headed to the beach the next morning. Imagine our surprise on Saturday night when we found a very dead hermit crab next to it and it smelled so bad! We tied it up in a plastic bag and bleached the shell after we got home, but we all felt a little bad for evicting our crab unknowingly.
My girls have always been good sleepers and will put themselves down for a nap, when needed, but this girl crashed so hard after our boating adventure.
Josh and I were probably just as exhausted, so we grabbed something quick and easy for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening reading in bed. This is one of my favorite parts of vacation.
We used to pack up and head home on Sunday morning, but that doesn’t leave much time to catch up on laundry and buy groceries before the work week begins. For the last two trips, we’ve kept our reservation through Sunday (so we didn’t have to check out early in the day) and after spending a day on the beach, headed home late in the afternoon. We were able to be on the beach until almost three o’clock and the girls didn’t miss out on anything, since most everyone had take out for dinner and started breaking down camp. We were on the road by four o’clock and had the easiest drive home with no trailer issues (remember this adventure?!).
I’m sad that it’s over, but so excited to think about having a baby in tow next summer! We’re working on a few tweaks in the camper, to make it more baby friendly, and we’ve already booked a spring break trip a little closer to home. We’re actually heading to the beach again this afternoon, to spend a few days in Pensacola with Josh’s family. It’s a very different vacation than what we’re used to and I’m kind of looking forward to a cushy condo, lots of rest, and letting the men plan all of our meals. Happy early weekend!
