Orange Beach - The End

All good things must come to an end. We had such a wonderful week and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with the family! Jeff, Jill and Marcus took off first because they are driving back to Dallas in one day. I actually had tears well up in my eyes when we got on the elevator to leave for many reasons...

I didn't want it to end

the special moments Pops and Kiki had with the kids

watching Kinsey try to grab a fish

watching Beck play in the sand even though he was profusely sweating

watching Marcus play in the water with no fear

and many, many more good times!

We took our time and left around 9:30am then stopped in for lunch at McDonald's. Not sure how I feel about this but this particular McD's did not have the typical play area. Instead, it had air hockey and video games. Brent and Beck played air hockey with a stranger and it was cracking me up. He seemed like a nice kid and then he played with a girl he knew and I overheard her saying that he's a cheater. Kinsey enjoyed climbing the rubber mountain. The best part about this stop is this...Brent and I wanted Taco Bell so we got our food there and brought it to McD's. As we were about to hit the road, we decided to fill up our cups. So, here I am with a big Taco Bueno cup filled with Root Beer (my favorite, caffeine free of course) and I knocked it over with the diaper bag right in front of the guy that was already mopping the floor!!! I was mortified!!! Brent looked at the guy and said, "I can't take her anywhere!" I quickly picked up the Taco Bell cup and threw it away!

We arrived at Baymont hotel in Alexandria, LA around 5:00pm and we were ready to eat dinner so we checked in to the hotel, put our stuff in the room then headed to Chili's. (On a side note, this is the same hotel we stayed in when we went to the beach with Beck three years ago!)

Brent will tell you that I'm a horrible traveler and I'll be the first to admit that I hate being stuck in a vehicle for long periods of time...it drives me crazy to be confined to a tiny space! And, what's worse is that I can't do anything in the car such as read a magazine, check Facebook, etc because I get car sick! With that being said, you can imagine how happy I was that we were able to relax in a hotel for the evening. We put Kinsey's pack n play in the bathroom which is what we should have done at the condo but I'm not sure it would have fit and we all got a good night's sleep. We ate breakfast at the hotel then hit the road a little after 9am. We ate lunch at Burger King in Longview because they have Transformer toys in the kid's meal. (I tried to get Neena to meet us but she didn't get my message until the next day.) Beck was in heaven with his new Transformer toys. We arrived at our house around 3pm and again, I was excited to get out of the truck! I had to get ready for the kids to come over the next day so I had to get busy unpacking, laundry, clean the house and go to the grocery store. Yuck! But, it was all worth it!

We made many memories on this trip and I'll cherish them forever!!!