Daytona Beach - Day 2

We woke Saturday morning with one thing on our minds: BEACH!  LL slept GREAT Friday night, but got us up promptly at about 6:15.  While that is too early to go to the beach, it was perfect timing for us to sit on the balcony of our room and give LL her milk, watch the sunrise, and watch a pod of dolphins swim in the calm ocean.  It was such a special moment for our family!

After our sunrise experience, we started getting ready to head down to the beach.  One fun thing about vacation?  Getting to break some rules!  One of the things that we let LL do while on vacation was let her eat a little bit of a powdered doughnut for breakfast.  How cute is this?

Emily and Zach kept asking us how we thought LL would do at the beach since this was her first time.  Knowing that she loves baths, pools, and even mud puddles, I figured she'd do fine.  We headed down to the beach around 8:00 and she did exactly as I thought she would - great!

We took some videos of her first day at the beach.  Just click to view: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4

This post is going to be sooo picture heavy, but I just can't avoid it since this was her first beach trip!  Here are some alot of pictures from our first morning on the beach:

First steps on the beach!

Playing in the sand

Pretty girl!

Lorelai walking....Daddy chasing!

Kye??  :)

Showing the kids...sand - haha

So precious!

Lorelai still walking....Daddy still chasing!

High five!

Handsome boy!

A rare moment of playing together.

A lot of room to run!

Kye loves to talk to EVERYBODY!

So cute!

Daddy kisses!

About 10:30 it was time for me to start heading up to the room to get LL her milk and get lunch ready.  After lunch, it was nap time!  This day was the boys' day for free time during nap, so Emily and I stayed in with the kids during nap time (I napped, too!) while the boys went back down to the beach to do some boogy boarding.

After the kids woke up, we all got ready and headed out to do some putt-putt.  Kye realy likes is obsessed with golf and had been putt-putting (?) before, so we all knew he'd have a blast.  Lorelai doesn't really have any experience with this kind of thing so we didn't really know how she'd do.  Well, we do now!  She didn't mind the first few holes of it, but she didn't really get it.  It was so hot out and all she wanted to do was play in the (nasty!) water that ran through the course.  What this means is, after about 5 holes, the child was DONE.  She was not having any more and started melting. Luckily, the people who ran the course said that the boys could come back later and play again for free since they didn't finish their game (awesome!).

                                       I love how they match!  Not planned, but totally cute!

Blue for Kye, Pink for LL

That's my girl!  That's how you do it!

In the cave - so hot!

We had planned to go to some seafood restaurant on the beach, but Emily (yes, Emily!) said something about going to Olive Garden.  She used some excuse about how she was just asking for us because she knows how much people from Valdosta love Olive Garden, blah blah blah.  All I really know is that we hadn't said anything about it and it was all Emily's idea.  Which tells me that she's a closet Olive Garden lover and just blames her obsession on other people.  :)

Olive Garden didn't go over too well - the kids were not on their best behavior and all the servers there acted like it was their first day on the job (and most of them were suuuuuuper old.  It was like the senior citizen OG).  Emily ended up having to take Kye outside to walk for a little bit, and I did the same thing with LL when she got back.  Luckily, the kids were in a better mood once we got food.

After dinner it was early enough for us to head to this ice cream shop that was right across from the hotel.  It was mega-pricey, but really good.  We thought it would be a cool idea to give each of the kids their own cone and just let them go at it.  That was good in theory.  Kye was not in the best of moods and dropped his ice cream pretty quickly -FAIL.  Lorelai loved it for a minute or two and then started to get really tired and fussy - FAIL.  This led to a not-so-fun experience.  We did get some good pictures that showed the better side of it, though!

Two of my favorite pictures of her from this trip:

After ice cream we headed back to get the kids ready for bed.  After the kids were asleep, Matt and Zach headed back for their free game of putt-putt.  Emily headed over to our room and we enjoyed just talking until the boys came back.  Zach is one of those people that wins at EV-RY-THING.  From cards, to sports, you name it.  Surprise, surprise - Matt BEAT HIM at putt-putt!  This is a big deal - especially considering Zach is a golfer.  We were pretty proud of him!