Please bare with me as this is going to be a very long blog! It has already taken me a long time to go through the hundreds of pictures!! We recently got home from a very special and memorable vacation in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We met our Texas and New York families for a fun beach vacation. We started talking about it last Summer up in New York. We threw around some dates and by August we had a house. It was a year of planning that turned out to be the best vacation ever! It was most of my Dad's side of the family. We missed Grandma, Aunt Kathy and Uncle John, but were so glad that everyone else could come! We had 22 adults and 5 kids on the trip. We rented a big 9 bedroom 9 bathroom house. It was right on the beach and perfect for our big family!
We spent the week prior staging and packing! The kids helped clean out the big cooler.
We only needed one nice outfit for family pictures!
We rented another van so that we could all ride together! We brought a lot more stuff this time, but some how managed to fit it all!
We got on the road around 530am and had a pretty smooth drive.
We randomly saw our next door neighbors on the road in Mississippi. They were heading to Destin.
We finally got to the house around 5pm and were so excited to see everyone! We grabbed a drink and went out to the beach!!
We ordered pizza and wings for dinner until we could get to the grocery store. The next morning, Kiley and I were getting into our bathing suits and she had a seizure. So we spent the first morning in Urgent Care. She had an ear infection and we had missed her seizure meds due to the traveling, so it unfortunately led to a seizure.
Poor Ava ended up at Urgent care a couple of days later with a double ear infection.
Now that we got that out of the way, we were ready to have a good time! This was the view from our house. I could not believe how big the beach was!
And this was the view of our house from the beach! It is the tall green one next to the pink house.
We split our days between the pool....
...and the beach!
A lot of our beach time was dedicated to building some massive sand castles! With 5 little kids, about 10 big kids, an excavator, a home builder and some other talents, they turned out pretty amazing!
When there are 25 people with phones all around you get a lot of selfies...
...and pictures of people "napping".
Marmee resting with Kiley after she came home from the doctor.
This one is by far the sweetest. Kiley climbed right up in Preston's lap and went to sleep.
And this was the funniest. Bentley climbed up on Mikey and blew the horn in his face. He really wanted to go ghost crab hunting!
It is hard work shopping and cooking for 27 people.
We had mostly continental type breakfasts and sandwiches and leftovers for lunch. For dinners, we had burgers and dogs, bbq chicken and ribs, mexican night, italian night, seafood night and jumbalaya. It was all delicious.
One morning, we threw a surprise baby shower for my cousin, Hannah who is expecting a son in September!
Hannah and baby enjoyed a lot of love and pampering from the family!!
We can't wait to meet our sweet new cousin!
I hired a professional photographer to come take individual and group family pictures. We don't have the proofs back, but here are some previews...
After the pictures we had a seafood company bring a shrimp boil to us. Apparently we were over taking pictures and were pretty hungry because I don't see any pictures of the shrimp and crab dinner.
On Thursday night after dinner, we surprised Mycah with a cake and some presents for her 30th birthday. Her actual birthday isn't until October, but we thought it would be fun to celebrate her big milestone with her family.
On our last night, we all wore our special tshirts and took some pictures on the beach at sunset.
The 4 siblings.
Dad's Family
Bruce's Family.
Greg's Family.
Karen's Family
All of Us
And a few other ones...
We spent the first six nights hanging out at the house. Talking, dancing, playing games and crab hunting.
The last night, all 27 of us went out to a place called The Hangout. It had live music and fun stuff for the kids to do!
We are nearing the end folks. Here are a few other random pictures.
We could not have asked for a more amazing family vacation. It went by way too fast, but we are so thankful for all of the time we shared and the memories we made. Until next time....#backyardboogie.
2 comments:
I knew you went to Gulf Shores but didn't know you went with so many people! Looks like y'all had a blast & I am so impressed with your sandcastle :)
Had SO. MUCH. FUN. We are so blessed to be this close with everyone in our family even though we live so far apart. Can't wait for our next big adventure :)
Post a Comment