Annual Orange Beach Trip

The Friday of Memorial Day weekend we headed down to Orange Beach. We had an awesome weekend with Lollie, Poppy, She She, Josh, Thomas, and a few of his friends. The Cochrans, some of our very dear friends from Nashville, were down for the weekend so on Saturday we headed over to see them. Ellie always has so much fun with the boys, and Greer will be joining in on the fun real soon.

Davis, Ellie, and Greer...

This was G's first trip to the beach since last summer when he was itty bitty, and he loved it!

Daniel & Davis' Uncle Jeff was there for the fun and was SO helpful with the kids!

We couldn't keep Greer out of the water!

G excited about his new beach chair that Lollie got him!

On Saturday afternoon we celebrated Thomas' 18th birthday. I can't believe he is 18! We have a tradition of going to the beach for his birthday weekend and eating my mom's gumbo, boiled shrimp, and her famous cookie cake!

After the birthday celebration we all got ready and headed to play goofy golf.

Ellie got her own little golf club and LOVED it!

Rusty helped her a lot, but she actually played by herself too!

G was really into watching. He was suffering another ear infection but hung in there as long as he had his paci.

Thank goodness we are able to enjoy the boat this year! Ellie never even got the chance to ride last year because of the oil.

She had a great time and kept asking to go on "another boat ride" the entire weekend.

Helping Uncle Josh drive...

This was G's first boat ride. Doesn't he look like he's having a blast in that life jacket??? He never got upset one time though!

On Monday all of the "boys" headed out and left us girls, Lollie, Ellie, She She, and me (plus Greer) for the week. We started off our week by going to LuLu's. We mostly went for Ellie to get a new t'shirt, but we ate a little too!

It was HOTTT...

And our 30-minute wait turned into over an hour so we had to find activites like the ring toss...

and eat puffs on the ground...

After LuLu's we headed to the Wharf to ride the ferris wheel and get ice cream.

Love this of him looking down...

Ellie loving it while Lollie is holding on for dear life because she hates heights! She kept threatening to bail out when we got to the bottom, but she hung in there with us!

We got lots of pool time in since the beach proved to be a lot more work than it was worth!

She gradually progressed with her swimming throughout the week, and by the 4th day she was swimming all over the pool with her floaties on. Thank goodness because I couldn't handle much more of having to "hold her" all over the pool plus having G who was fearless!

Loving his first apple that he swiped out of the bottom of the fridge!

"Look what I've got..."

One of my mom's good friends told us about an alligator that she sees all along at the state park so we decided we would load up and take the kiddos to see him.

Of course we load everybody up, walk about a mile in the 98 degree heat to the "spot," get there, and NO alligator. Ellie decided he must have been "sleeping" under the water. By the way back, they were lovin life...

Mr. Alligator was supposed to be down in that marshy area behind E...

More pool time...

And some late afternoon beach time. G LOVES the ocean and would just plunge straight in, roll over, and come up with his face covered in sand.

He kept doing this, and it was hilarious...

One night after dinner we decided to do a little shopping. Bad idea because this little girl was in one of her moods. After barging into the "employee area" where one of the employees had their dog in a crate, and getting scolded for that (by the lovely employee), I walked over to browse and looked over to find her like this. She then proceeded to walk around with this on, get the double Bob that G was in, and rammed it into a clothes rack. We then headed to the dressing room area, and while Lollie was keeping an eye on her while I tried something on, I hear some lady very angrily say, "excuse me." I knew it had to be my child climbing under her dressing room, and of course it was! Needless to say, I think they were glad to see us go!

She was doing this by mid-week.

Even though I look rough I had to post this picture because I think we actually look alike for once!

Now check out G's get up! Lollie talked me into getting him this since he is a WILD MAN at the pool! We decided he needed some type of floatation device to help hold him up.

Check out the rear-view. We spent most of the time he was wearing it just cracking up!

The week wouldn't have been complete without baking something so E and Lollie made us some yummy cupcakes.

in their matching LuLu's shirts...so cute...

Mmmmm...

We had a GREAT week with GREAT weather and cannot wait to head back down in July!

And thanks to She She and Lollie for all of their help! I couldn't have survived without them!