Rosemary Beach 2011

We took our first family vacation as a family of 5 this past month as we went to Florida with my brother and his family. Flying with 3 kids seemed a little daunting, but we decided it was worth trying with a beautiful beach as our "prize". (sorry this post will be annoyingly long and full of lots of pictures!)

We flew from Tulsa and met my brother's family in Houston. We were so excited that it worked out for us to fly together at least one leg of the trip, and we felt a little sorry for the other passengers as we had 6 kids 5 years old and under with us! The kids, however, did amazing and I think they could have been happy with just a family trip of flying on airplanes. I think one of the more comical times of our trip was getting all our luggage at the airport when we arrived. Between the two families we had 12 bags (thank you Southwest for letting us check so much stuff!), 2 double strollers, and 6 really excited kids. I felt like we were the 3 ring circus entertaining all the people in airport. At one point I had a woman ask me if they were all my kids. Right.

We got to the house around 5:30, unpacked our bags and headed straight to the beach with the kids. The sunset was gorgeous and the kids couldn't believe how much cooler this was than just riding an airplane! Ethan had no qualms about jumping right into the water, and it was so fun watching his complete joy swimming in the water. Owen was a little more hesitant, but he was thrilled to play in the sand.
Our first morning there we ate and headed straight out to the beach. This was Harper's first time to see it all, and she wasn't overly impressed. I think it mostly had to do with the fact that she was NOT feeling well. She did grab a handful of sand and try to eat...so she was checking it out!

True to form the boys approached the beach very differently! Ethan was in the water the minute we got there and didn't get out till it was time to leave. Owen, however, was not a fan of the waves and chose to let them touch him a little bit - if he wasn't busy "cooking" with Claire in the sand.



All the cousins got along wonderfully. Jack and Ethan picked right up where they left off last time, and they loved swimming together. Claire and Owen were the most surprising buddies of the trip...they both have the tendency to play in their own world and not with other people. Fortunately, their worlds meshed well together, and they both seemed to love playing together. By the end of the trip, Claire was calling Owen "punkin' " and Owen called Claire "Clairey". It was pretty cute.


We went to Seaside one afternoon for lunch at the Modeco Market. We also hit a fun ice cream shop that was on the Today for having chocolate dipped key lime pie (it was wonderful!). We also were sure to hit "The Sugar Shak" that was around the corner from our house. It was every kid's dream full of candy for any taste. One morning we walked to The Donut Truck only to find it closed, so we settled for powdered donuts from a convenience store to appease the distraught kids. They seemed just as happy with the donuts, but we adults were saddened because they did not taste as good as we remembered from our childhood!
The last night Chris and I went on a date to Cafe 33 (Jon and Katie went to The Red Barn the night before), and we enjoyed some AMAZING seafood and a beautiful walk on the beach afterwards.

It was such a wonderful vacation, and we are so thankful that we were able to share it with our family. I am pretty sure we're all ready to go back in 2012!