Got Crabs?

09.07.12

This is how we started our day and I've got a very similar picture of how we ended our day at the end of this post.

When Brent stepped out onto our balcony on this lovely Friday morning, he saw how high the water was last night and thought some sweet person moved our stuff for us...that sweet citizen was mommy and I saved the day!  Can you see the water line?

We brought down some left over food to give to the birds which was fun to watch.  Not only were the birds flying all around Beck and Kinsey but Beck would all of a sudden start chasing them!  Brent and I laughed so hard as well as a few on-lookers/beach-walkers.

Writing our names in the sand and getting pictures of the kids feet are a must!

We still have waves!  The kids have been awesome on this trip!  In fact, Beck asked if we could stay longer.

My sun-bathing beauty...

and, our King of the Hill!

I usually spent time on the balcony while the kids and Brent napped and today it rained.  It was funny to watch the storm roll in and the people on the beach waited until it rained on them to go inside.  One lady stood under her umbrella and a few people played in the ocean.  It was interesting to see how people reacted to the rain.

After the kids woke up, we drove to the outlet mall to find Brent some shorts for our family beach picture.  Beck immediately spotted a coin operated spaceship that he wanted to ride and Kinsey saw a
"horsie" that she wanted to ride.

Tonight, we finally made it down to the beach to search for crabs!  We've been talking about doing this ever since we booked the condo! While using our flashlights, we saw the smallest crab I've ever seen and it it sort of looked translucent.

As the ocean pulled back from the beach, I saw a somewhat large crab and Brent caught it!  He also captured another one right next to the one he just caught.  We were SO excited!!!  Brent scooped up some ocean water in our big bucket and we noticed a fish was in there too!  We had such good luck and the kids loved hunting for crabs.  However, we never saw another one after catching these two so we gave up and the kids jumped in the pool.

And, this is how we ended our day which looks very similar to how was started our day.  Good times!

The Best Restaurant in Pensacola!

Usually, I'm the one that has these bright ideas which are known as "Sheri's Adventures" and most of the time they turn out fun but every once in a while my adventure is a bust.  Shocking as it may be, Brent actually took advice from a co-worker and we drove all the way to Pensacola to eat at Joe Patti's.  By the time we got there, it was dinner time for the kids and they were ready to eat!  A small trailer was set up in front of this place and two ladies were selling beignets which is my all time favorite thing to eat!  Anyway, we go inside with great expectations of eating a fabulous seafood meal.  However, this place is a meat market where you buy fresh fish, take it home and cook it yourself!  Bam!  We were totally bummed but at the same time I was laughing so hard on the inside because Brent's adventure turned out to be a bust.  We both laughed about it because something like this normally happens to me.  Needless to say, we had to buy some beignets because the kids were so hungry.  We walked to the back of this place to take a look at the boats they use to bring in the fresh fish and to gobble up some powdered sugar coated beignets.  Kinsey looks like a little bird with her mouth wide open!

We also ate some beignets in Daddy's truck and made a big, big mess!

We drove around searching for a seafood restaurant and finally found one that looked appealing called, Nick's Boathouse.  To our surprise, kids eat free on Thursday night...yippee!!!  I fell in love with the paintings especially the one with the sunshine song on it because I sing that song to Kinsey every night and I used to sing it to Beck when he was younger.  That is a very special song to me and it sometimes bring tears to my eyes when I sing it to them because they truly are my sunshine.

At this point, we are still optimistic about this place but quickly fell in love with the ambiance when we sat on the patio.  Wow, what a view!

The many faces of Kinsey which makes me smile!

She loves taking pictures and she wanted to take one of us...I love it!

Beckster is such a little sweetie pie!  Kinsey wanted to sit in his chair and he gave her a kiss...just melts my heart!

Brent ordered the shrimp po boy...do you see how many shrimp are on his sandwich?  Wow!  I ordered blackened shrimp with the vegetable of the day which happens to be my favorite, squash and zucchini and it was served with the best tasting sweet/sour sauce!!!  My food was incredible!  The kids menu had a selection of tasty items including shrimp which is what we got for Beck because he loves them but refers to them as chicken.  He ate every single shrimp on his plate!!!  Kinsey is into walking around while we eat and we would give her bites as she passes us.  This is a must if you are in the area!  As we were about to leave, the manager that we had been talking to gave us a $10 gift certificate for our next visit.  How awesome is that!?!?  I'm keeping it for our next trip to the beach! 

After dinner, we took a walk down to the water...

Since we were in Pensacola, we decided to check out a new ferris wheel that just opened up the beginning of July called 360 with air conditioned gondolas.  It was pretty neat but I wish we had got there before it was dark.

Then, we stopped in Hershey's for what every beach trip must include...ice cream!

We made lots of memories today!  And, it doesn't end here...remember the picture of Beck's buried dump truck and the spiral metal stakes that I pointed out in a previous post?  Around midnight, I walked out on the balcony for one last look of the ocean and noticed the water was coming up really high.  I saw water under our tent!  Brent had already gone to bed so I walked down there and moved all of our stuff further back on the beach.  All of the spiral stakes were about to wash away as well as all of the toys that we had put in Beck's dump truck and the kiddie pool probably would have been gone too if I had not gone down there and moved everything.  What an exciting midnight adventure!  I tried to take a picture of the water under our tent but it was too dark.

Shark and Waves!

09.06.12

We got an early start on this Thursday morning and drove to the Gulf State Park Pier in hopes of seeing lots of big fish.

Not nearly as many fisherman as we've seen in the past and the pelicans were trying to steal the bait from the fisherman.  Now that was pretty wild to see!

This little boy was so sweet to us and loved showing us the fish that he and his family had caught.  Beck and Kinsey loved seeing his fish and didn't want to leave the cooler.

After waiting a few minutes, this youngster was the only person we saw catch a fish.  He also let us in on a little secret that a 6' shark was swimming around and we actually saw it! That was very cool!

We went back to our condo and hit the beach.  Daddy quickly started working on a big hole for the kids to play in and it quickly filled with ocean water.

The waves are still in full swing and I love it!

Kinsey wasn't into the ocean today...

In the picture below, I want you to notice what Beck did to his truck and also notice the white metal spiral stakes that we used to hold down the canopy...I'll tell you a story about these two things later.

It's good to give the kids a project and this project was funny for Mommy to watch and that's pouring water on Daddy!

This is our third full day here and the kids have decided that the best and most fun thing to do is jump the waves but only Daddy can do it.  For some reason, it wasn't as fun when Mommy did it but that's ok because I was able to catch some really cool pictures.

We are planning on doing the traditional dress-up family beach picture tomorrow night but I also wanted a casual family beach picture and a sweet lady strolling the beach happily obliged us.

Hot Rolls!!!

09.05.12

The rain is holding off on this lovely Wednesday morning so we are going to hit the beach for some fun in the sun!

Daddy brought his boogie board and after a couple of attempts, he decided it was too hard because the waves crashed too soon.

I have to explain what happened in the picture below because it's actually really funny...I was sitting close to the edge of the water facing the condo when a wave hit me from behind and my finger pressed the camera button and this is what I got...a very shocked Sheri!  I cracked up when I saw my reaction.

Beck got Daddy back by throwing sand in his face...He-he!  The day before, Daddy threw sand at Beck and it happened to land right on Beck's face.  Needless to say, the poor boy was very distraught!

Tonight was the night to eat at the world famous, Lambert's Cafe and we quickly realized that this place is only busy during the summer time.  There were people eating there but not nearly as many as what we usually see in June.

This place has really good food but the hot rolls that are thrown around are oh-so-yummy!

It was yucky outside so we headed to The Track to play some arcade games and they have new ones since we were here last year.  This big alien bicycle race game was really cute!

The biggest problem with giving Beck a bucket of tokens is that he will put a token in a game and play for a few seconds then leave it!

Daddy really hit the jackpot tonight!  He played a game that gave him about 600 tickets!!!  We've never had that many tickets before!  And, Beck and Kinsey absolutely love feeding the ticket machine.

Kinsey was running around as Beck started looking at what he could get with the tickets.  He really wanted a stuffed animal that was 650 tickets so we decided to get that for him since Kinsey wasn't paying attention.  He named his stuffed animal, "Sharkie".  That is so sweet!

We stopped at the souvenir shop that we used last time to see if we could get airbrush shirts for the kids and we got lucky because the guy working was so helpful and really nice.  He told us about the different brands of shirts and he talked to us about the recent storm they had.  He said they got more rain on Monday night (our first night here) than when the storm hit but I find that really hard to believe because the streets did not flood on Monday night but they were flooded when the storm hit.  Anyway, he did an awesome job on the shirts! 

The rain prohibited us from riding the rides outside at The Track but that's ok because we had a blast playing games! Rain won't stop us from having fun!