Day 4 (Tuesday)

 She woke up ready to go see the water on this day...

AND, for the first time, she really LOVED it!!

I really think she was laughing at her daddy here.  If you look into the waves you can see a little spec being knocked over, that is her daddy :)

 We sat under our umbrella playing in the sand and watching daddy try to boogie board for about 30 mins until finally she was ready to walk to the water:

 I love the shots above, Aylin Jewel and her daddy walking to the water together.  In the last one you can really see how proud daddy was too ;) 

On our walk back to the car, Aylin found these little flowers growing on the beach and she picked a lot of them.  In fact, I am still finding parts of flowers and SAND, for that matter, in my car!

After lunch, we decided to take the Ferry out to Dolphin Island and tour the military fort out there.  It was a lot of fun, and Aylin was more of a happy tourist this time.  This fort has a better set up than Fort Morgan and is more educational with different posts to read, museums, etc.

 

I JUST HAD TO...

I took the pics below because they would be great for my Social Studies class, then I remembered I wasn't teaching social studies this year :(

When we left Fort Morgan, we headed out to eat and then to have Aylin Jewel's 2 year portraits taken on the beach at sunset.  I am still waiting on them to be mailed to us and am very anxious to see how they turned out.  Afterwards, we went for ice cream, where Aylin slid through the bench seats and busted her lip pretty badly <--at least it happened AFTER we took pics!  I will post a pic of her boo-boo in tomorrow's post.

We ended the night with a trip to one of those amusement places with arcades, miniature golf, go-carts, and rides...

We did not know that there were water guns on the bumper boats!  We were at the front of the line when it RE-OPENED, needless to say the young kids on the ride with us LOVED soaking us old people, and having Aylin with me didn't help because every time we got sprayed she squealed and giggled and waved!

Day 3 (Monday)

Happy Memorial Day! 

Thanks to all who have served in our military and to those who are still fighting for our freedoms.

 Daddy and Aylin having a talk about God's creation :)

Since this was Memorial Day, we were a little timid about going to the beach.  We thought it would just be too crowded.  But our spot from Saturday was still empty, so we got to spend another morning on the beach!  As you can see, even on her 2nd day at the beach AJ was still a little scared.

 Above are some pictures of Jewel Bug's favorite part of the trip...the outdoor shower!  Each day after coming back to our house, she ran to this and waited for us to turn it on.  She would play in it for 20 mins or so, and then be ready to go upstairs and get a bath.  Love this silly girl!

 Thinking back, this was one of my most favorite days of vacation.  A big part of that is seen in the three pics above.  Baby girl would NOT take a nap at the house, and this is the day that we figured out if we eat dinner around 4:30 or 5 she would crash on the way to the restaurant and get in a nap.  What made this night so special was two fold: (1) We ate at my favorite place while we were down there, a classy, beautifully decorated, Italian Seafood place in Orange Beach. (2) Aylin slept all the way through dinner!!! :)

I had to get a pic of AJ under a palm tree with her pineapple shirt on, it just made me smile.

After dinner, we went through a drive-thru and got baby girl something to eat, and she was just as happy as she could be.  Then we hit a few of those surf shops.  We were looking for water shoes for AJ, some type of float device for her, and a boogie board for mommy and daddy :)  We chose the 2 surf shops above because every time we drove by them Aylin would get wide-eyed, squeal, and say "whooaaa!"  She had a lot fun in these places, and so did we; her reactions to the giant sharks, octopus, turtles, and fish were priceless.  She even loved all the pirate stuff!

 We watched the sunset from in front of a giant pirate ship and ended our day with TCBY!

Aylin pretended to share her sorbet with sprinkles with me, then pulled it back and stuck her tongue out at me!  She's such a little stinker :)

Day 2 (Sunday)

We did not go to the beach on Sunday because of time.  We had planned on worshipping at 2 different places Sunday but ended up sticking with The Gulf Shores congregation for both morning and evening worship services out of curiosity.  You see on Sunday morning their building was packed out! Chairs had been added down the aisles, and the fellowship hall had been opened and turned into more seating.  There were almost 700 people in attendance that morning, only about 90 were actual members, everybody else was just visiting!  So what were we curious about?  How many would return that night for evening services.  Sadly, that evening, the count only seemed to be a little over 100.  I don't know why Christians feel like vacation time means vacationing away from the Lord.

In between services we toured the historic Fort Morgan!  Aylin fell asleep after lunch during the drive to the fort, so she wasn't the happiest little tourist this day :)

But still one of the cutest!

 

Day 1 (Saturday)

The first thing we did when we woke up was went to have breakfast.  Bobby found some breakfast buffet back in Gulf Shores that he wanted to try; the funny thing was as we were walking in so were a family with ties to the Southaven Church!  We chatted with them a while and enjoyed our only breakfast out for the week.  We only budgeted to eat out for dinner each night.  After breakfast, we went to Walmart to grocery shop.  As we were getting things to make sandwiches we ran across this:

Aylin screamed "ICKEE" and I kind of got a little excited too! :) So while we don't usually spend money on stuff like this, we did this time.  Jewel Bug didn't really care for the cheese, but I loved it!  After we got back to Fort Morgan, we loaded up the car with beach toys and drove down the street to our "private" beach.  The only people allowed here were those who live in the small neighborhood.  We drove down the street looking out at the water, listening to Aylin say "water" over and over again until we found a good place.  By good place, I mean where no one else was.  As Christians, we try to be modestly dressed whenever we are in public and try to not put ourselves in possible situations where everyone around us is immodestly dressed.  Yes, this is sometimes VERY hard to do.  While Aylin did wear a bathing suit, Bobby and I did not just in case others were around.  That first morning served as our test run to see whether or not we would be able to spend adequate time at the beach while on vacation.  It turned out GREAT!  We were able to stay until about 1 PM, that's when other people started showing up not dressed modestly, so we would head back to our house, eat lunch, and go sightseeing.  This schedule worked out perfectly the whole week!

Top Left: the beach as seen from our car...EMPTY! :)

Top Right: Bobby walking Aylin down to the water for the very 1st time :) 

She did NOT like it and cried this day every time her feet touched the sand :(

Bottom Left: Our 1st sand creations :)

Bottom Right: She was all smiles playing with her toys, on the beach blanket, under the umbrella :)

 My little BASKET CASE!

This evening our sightseeing consisted of shopping at the Tanger Outlet Mall in Foley, AL.  They had a really nice playground, carousel, and sprinkler park right in the middle of the mall.  So while daddy shopped, Aylin and I played!!

I love these last two shots!  She was having so much fun, and that makes my heart smile. :)

 

The Drive (Friday)

The night before we left, Aylin and I painted our toenails :)

I was very worried about the drive down to the Gulf.  Aylin Jewel is not the greatest of riders and honestly, I was dreading this part so much that I didn't really want to go on the trip!  It turned out to be

W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!

She did great.  I left work at noon, came home, loaded up Rosie (the Nissan Cube), and we were on our way.  We drove about an hour or so and stopped for lunch, then got back on the road.  She let us drive straight through Mobile before we stopped again for dinner!

In fact, she did great the whole time we were gone with riding.  She actually stills asks to go get into the car.  There were a few things that helped us get through the drive:

And of course our PACI, LOVEY, BEAR, and BABIES!

The Vacation: An Overview

We recently went on our first vacation in 3 years, and it was also Aylin Jewel's first trip to the beach.  We rented a little house (vrbo.com) in a private neighborhood that had private beach access to the Gulf of Mexico.  Our address for the Memorial Day week was in Fort Morgan, AL (just west of Gulf Shores).  It was just the three of us and was great!  Don't get me wrong, I love going places with friends and family, but it's just nice to be "just us."

We went to the beach every morning but Sunday, and Aylin finally liked the beach by the end of the trip :) We also had AJ's 2 year pictures taken one evening on the beach at sunset.  I will post them whenever I receive them from the photographer, and hopefully will change our title picture then.   My plan is to post pics from each day in a new blog post over the next week; we'll see how it works out because you all know how notoriously bad I am at this blogging thing.

This past Monday, I started potty training little Jewel Bug.  We are using the 3-Day Method where you just throw away diapers and put on "big girl panties" and don't leave your house!  We are currently on DAY 4, and still not quite there yet, but getting a little better each day.  It is very tiresome for both of us, but thankfully hasn't been too emotional.

Until the next post, I hope you have enjoyed these shots of the waves.  I know they make me happy!

May=Bad Blogging Month :( *One of those long, catch-up posts...

So I have been terrible this month and am just now blogging my 1st post!  Everything has just been so busy!  Tomorrow is my last day of school for the summer, and we are leaving for our 1st vacation in 3 years.  We are taking Aylin Jewel to the beach, Fort Morgan, AL (Gulf Shores) to be exact.  We have been cleaning like crazy tonight because my mother is going to come house and dog sit for us :) Oh, and I still have to blog about AJ's 2nd birthday party!  I am just going to do one big post with a few mini posts:

POST #1: Lets start with the party...

THE CAKE!

We were set up with a wonderful cake lady for Jewel Bug's 1st birthday party, and we decided to use her again.  Maureen Fortune of Southaven, MS makes amazing cakes as a side business from her very own kitchen!  Everything was edible! :)

THE BIRTHDAY GIRL!

Thanks Mrs. Elaine for our birthday shirt and Ms. Shelley for the Bouncer :)

Thanks to all of our friends who came to play: Mary Claire, Payton, Macey Jo, Danni, Dean, John Stephen, Laney Claire, Alayna, Micah, Easton, Griffin, and Reed!

Thank you Becka Matthews for painting this great photo memory maker!

Thank you daddy for putting up with mommy when she was trying to put this party together, and for helping to get everything inside when it started to RAIN!

Finally, thank you God for this beautiful, healthy, fun, loving, crazy 2 year old blessing!

I love you sweet baby girl!

POST #2: The Family Birthday Party

So none of Aylin's grandparents made it to her birthday party :( Aunt Tessa, my baby sister, had a state twirling competition in Nashville so my parents were there.  Bobby's mother recently severely hurt her back while working and was just in too much pain to make it to her party.  We decided to have a grandparent's cook out/birthday party so they could see her open her gifts :) Unfortunately, Bobby's parents were not able to make it but my parents came and gave Aylin a pop-up soccer goal!

 

 

 

Oh Jewel Bug, goalie is not in your future...you will not stay out of the net ;)

POST #3: The Mississippi River Flood of 2011

 

By the time we actually had time to get downtown to see the flood waters, they had already started receding, but AJ was still excited to see the WHAWHA (water) and the CHOOCHOO (trolley).

POST #4: School's Out for Summer

 *Well there was a post and a video but the video crashed my old computer and we were trying to leave for our vacation so I couldn't fix it. 

 

We have had a GREAT first 2 days of vacation, but that is all I am going to say because we are heading back out to the bach before it gets crowded :)