Summer Vacation - The Penscola Beach

This summer we went on a family vacation.  We spent a week in Orlando, Florida with Mark's parents and Mark's brother's family.  Everyone flew, but we decided to extend our vacation and drive. We left the day school was out.  We had an awesome time on the road trip.  I planned many things to entertain us in the car.  We had movies (I even watched a couple of movies.  This was a first for me in years!) and video games of course, but we also had some books on tape (They were Gage's age, but everyone enjoyed them), we read a couple of Junie B Jones books aloud, the kids had new books to read silently and sticker books to keep them busy.  The first night we stayed in Slidell, Louisiana.  The boys always love to stay in a hotel and we fell in love with Homeward Inn Suites.  It is a great value for the price with separate living and bedroom area.  We spent the evening by the pool.  Then Day 2 we stopped in Pensacola for the afternoon.  We had some fun on the beach and in the sand.  The white sand was beautiful, but I had expected the water to be more blue and clear.  Next time we will have to research first and find a more populated beach that may be more groomed.  But it was nice and quiet to have this beach mostly to ourselves.  

Road trip!

Our first destination:Pensacola Beach, Florida

As you can tell, the kids had a great time in the water.  We came away with a collection of sea shells and sand dollars.  Although we searched we never found a whole one.  In all the hustle and bustle to get everyone in the water, Mark and I both thought the other person put sunscreen on Gage.  We did manage to get some on him, but forgot his face.  So he ended up with pink cheeks the next day.  Parent fail!  Although, Mark and I were pretty proud of our planning since Gage slept the rest of the way to Tallahassee where we stayed night 2.  Also another reason the kids think it is cool to stay in a hotel is because they have great breakfast buffets! After a full tummy we headed for Orlando to check into our villa for seven days at Orange Lake Country Club and Resort.

Fun fact to remember about our road trip:  Somewhere on I10 near Baytown, we lost the stroller that was strapped to the top of the car.  It was a miracle it didn't cause an accident and landed on the side of the road.  There was no way for us to safely stop and retrieve it so we had to leave it behind, and we knew it was broken since we saw a wheel crossing the lanes of traffic.