Soaking up the Sun in Destin

This will be our Christmas Card 2008...NOT!

As long as Emily was not in the ocean, off of the sand and eating treats, she didn't scream. She still cried A LOT and never did smile once. She pretty much hated the whole beach experience!
Jacob loved the water and got a good tan!
Emily loved the pool. Good thing we traveled so far to find one.
We had a great day at the water park.

The best part was that there were no jelly fish and Emily stayed happy the whole day!

We went boating one day to Crab Island. We had a great time. We found tons of hermit crabs.
Emily wasn't sure of the boat and she sure didn't like the life jacket!

We found lots of starfish.
Sarah even caught a jellyfish...YIKES!

The jelly fish were horrible this year! Luckily we had Jacob there to pee on all our stings.

At night time, we went down to the beach and searched for sandcrabs with flashlights.

The kids and Bryan caught a few.

We even caught a few blue crabs! This one is hanging onto one of the hermit crabs we caught.

To end our summer, we decided to take one last vacation. So... we packed up the car and loaded up the kids and drove all night long. After 10 very uncomfortable hours, we arrived in Destin. Our kids wasted no time, and quickly donned their suits and sprayed their sunscreen and were off to 5 days worth of fun in the sun with their friends. This is our second year to vacation in Destin. It is a huge hot spot for a lot of East Texans to vacation. When my three youngest kids were in kindergarten, their teacher, Mrs. Glover taught a beach unit. My kids had no idea what a beach even was. I was always apologetic to the teacher but would explain that I certainly was never impressed with the beach that I knew...Galveston. So, after a little bit of coaxing from friends, and as not to disappoint Mrs. Glover again, we decided to make sure Emily got to the beach before she started kindergarten. Destin is beautiful, nothing like Galveston. You can actually see your feet in the ocean. You don't have seaweed wrapped around your ankles or tar covering your body when you come out of the water. And most impressive, is the fact that the sand is white and soft. We all had a great time and enjoyed visiting with our friends and just relaxing. If Emily shapes up and decides to like sand, we may even return next year!