Our 1st family vacation!

Growing up our family went to Destin every year with my Aunt & Uncle’s family. It was always so much fun. I definitely want to make family vacation a priority in our family. I think it creates so many fun family memories and I want my girls to have this. This year we decided to take the girls to the beach that I went to every year as their first family vacation. We spend the week of the 4th of July in Destin, Florida and we all had a blast.

Air travel out of NWA is always complicated. We have a great, small airport but it has hardly any direct flights and the flights are always very expensive. We decided it was worth the money not to have to travel to Tulsa but we did have a layover each way (connections with babies are not much fun). The girls had their moments of frustration but overall I would say they did great.

We had 44 family members that went this year. We all had different houses around the city but we were all in the same city and got together multiple times. Our house was just a short walk from the beach and we had a great neighborhood pool as well. The girls loved the beach. Reese had fun jumping over the waves, playing in the sand, she really enjoyed snacking on the beach and going out to jump waves in the deep water with mommy and daddy. She also had a fun time with her cousin Jacob and with my cousins kids. She got to bury her daddy in the sand, build sand castles, find shells and look at all of the scary creatures that Jacob was finding in the seaweed. Ella enjoyed eating sand, sitting with me in the shallow waves and she was most interested in the make shift pool that Neal or I would make for her each day (I would fill the inflatable boat with a couple of inches of water and put some toys in it). I thought that she may nap out on the beach in the shade of the canopy but no luck. Ella was not a very good sleeper in general at the beach and was up by 5:30 each morning. Neal and I were generally tired but that didn’t stop us from having a lot of fun.

Neal got to go golfing with my Uncle and Cousin one morning. I got to go shopping multiple times. All 44 of us got together at my Aunt’s place for dinner and fireworks on the 4th. The fireworks show was really pretty but got to be a bit too much for my girls towards the end. This was the girls first fireworks experience. We were really close to the display, things were falling on us and it. Was. So. Loud. It sounded like we were in a war zone at the very end of it. Reese loved it until the end and then she started crying big crocodile tears so we took them inside.

The trip home was a full day of travel due to a long layover and delays. Reese busted her lip running through the airport. We had a great time but were oh so happy to be home. I look forward to many fun trips like this in our future and am so excited for the days when the girls are old enough to enjoy little excursions. I love my little family so much and am so happy that we get to make memories like this one together.