Mobile Bay Ferry

On Ben's birthday we decided to take the ferry over to Fort Morgan and then head into Gulf Shores.  Here we are driving onto the ferry.  It takes 35 minutes to get across the bay & it was $35 a car load!

Once all the cars are loaded you can get out and go up on the top deck.  It was SUPER windy but we still got out to take a look.

Love the expression!

The lighthouse off in the distance.

The seagulls follow the ferry both ways hoping to get lucky with some food.  Those are oil rigs off in the distance...they dot the coast down there.

Once we drove off the ferry onto Fort Morgan I looked back and Elese was sound asleep.  Poor thing just couldn't keep up!

While we were over at Gulf Shores we made our annual trip to the Shark store.  The kids love that place...you get to look inside the sharks stomach on the way into the store.

Jumping up to get the teeth!

Sweet girls!  I just had to laugh at the sunglasses on the head...Em's growing up fast :)

This was taken while we were waiting for the ferry to take us back to Dauphin Island.  One of my favorite pictures during the trip!

Eli & Tyler hanging out in the tree.

Katelyn is such a sweet girl.  I love this picture of her.

Ben is such a mosquito magnet that he decided to wait for the ferry in the car versus getting eaten alive.  Hey, it's his birthday so we let him have his way!

Driving onto the ferry boat to go back home!  That's an up close view of an oil rig in the background.

Hanging out the sunroof!

Dauphin Island local Lynn told me that the best sunset was on the ferry ride back to the island...she was SO right!  Thank you God for such a wonderful trip.

Happy 40th Birthday Ben!

Ben turned 40 during our vacation to Dauphin Island.  He didn't want a big deal to be made but we managed to pull together a few surprises.

Ben's a big golfer so we arranged some golf balls in the #40!

Chessa worked really hard making a giant 4-0 filled with pictures from birth till now of Ben & his family.

I think this speaks for itself!  Cute idea :)

On Ben's birthday we headed over to Gulf Shores, AL and went out to eat at the Oyster House.  This was the only time we ate out for dinner all week.  We had a nice dinner & the kids had fun too.

Isn't Scott handsome?  He's been growing out his hair and it looks so good!

Happy Birthday Ben!  We will miss you guys when you move to Charlotte this summer :(

More Fun!

This line of seaweed was right in the path four house heading out to the beach.  Eliot was so funny trying to navigate how to get down to the water.  For the first 2 days he would walk all the way around the seaweed.  By the end of the week he just went right through.

Sidney & Tyler loved crabbing at nights.  Under our house was like a crab hotel...there were so many crabs! 

 

Tyler caught a HUGE crab...bigger than we've ever caught on previous trips to the Gulf.  We were all really excited!

This is huge for a ghost crab.  Typically they are little, white & hard to see because they are super fast.

More fun on the boat.  Elese was content just to watch the girls have fun!

Elese was having some chill out time under the umbrella.  This was a day when she didn't nap so she needed a little down time.

The kids loved playing on the Moore's IPod touches.  The girls would use these for music to add to their performances.

Tyler & Eli playing a game one morning.

Beach Fun!

On day 2 we were all ready to head out to the beach first thing!  We had beautiful weather and the water was warm too.  Some days it was calm and other days we had huge waves.

Eli spent some of his money the week before we left on a good swimming mask.  The bad news is that it got pulled off under the water and washed away on the 1st day!  We couldn't find it anywhere. :(

Elese enjoyed being buried in the sand all week.  One day Katelyn made her into a mermaid and she LOVED it!  She would get into the water but liked it better when an adult was in with her.

Emery is such a cautious child.  She wasn't quite sure of swimming out too far in the ocean.  She's not scared of the water just what could be living/swimming in it!  I was so proud of her for pushing herself all week.  She was out catching waves and had a ball playing with her friends.

Eliot LOVED the sand and the ocean.  His favorite thing had to be the beach shower and faucet though.  He would spend hours playing there if we let him!

Katelyn digging in the sand.  The boat in the background made for hours of fun in the ocean!  I highly recommend getting one for your family when you head to the beach.  By the time 7 kids played with it for several days it bit the dust but was worth every penny...thank you Grandma & Grandaddy!

Great sandcastle Tyler!

Sidney was great at helping us out with the kids.  I'm sure was ready to strangle Elese by the end of the week...she just wouldn't stay out of her stuff!  Sidney & Elese shared a room and Elese's stuff was a complete mess.  Thank you Sidney for being so patient! :)

I'm telling you, this boat was great!

Eli & Tyler brought along kites for our vacation.  One day Eli asked Chessa to help him get his going.  I swear that Chessa is "Kite Whisperer"!  She seriously took the kite out of the package, threw it up & it was flying high in the sky.  Seriously, who has that kind of luck?

Isn't that beautiful?  As you can see from the picture we really had the beach to ourselves!  We think that many of the beach houses that were beside ours got wiped out in Hurricane Katrina and never rebuilt.

The girls are getting ready for one of their many performances!  That's the deck under the house.

My favorite part of the vacation was just relaxing on the beach.  I love how we were right on the beach and how we could run from the house to the beach and leave our stuff out all day.

Eliot's hair was so curly from the humidity!

Emery, Eli,Tyler & Sidney catching some waves!

That 2nd night the guys decided to get fishing poles ready for the next day.

Eli & Tyler were all about it!

Dauphin Island, Alabama

Last week was our spring break!  We headed to Dauphin Island, Alabama for a week of relaxation on the beach.  The trip was a total last minute decision when the Moore family invited us to join them.  This turned out to be one of our best beach trips ever!

Getting all loaded up!

We weren't even out of the driveway and the kids were already asking for a movie.  We fired up Looney Tunes and it gave us time for all of the last minute stuff we needed to do.

It wasn't long before the little ones were asleep.  We left at a different time than we normally do.  We left after lunch and drove for 8 hours the first day.  We stopped in Louisville for a short visit with Grandma then stopped overnight in Alabama.

Eliot was such a trooper.  Being in a car seat for 8+ hours is NOT easy for a nearly 2 year old boy!

Yeah, we made it...or so the kids thought!  It's hard to understand that we are in Alabama but not quite there yet.  To make matters worse Alabama is a very large state and most of our driving was in the state of Alabama alone.

Once you reach the bottom of Alabama you are at Mobile, AL.  The next thing you see is this big bridge in the distance.  It's the Dauphin Island expressway!

Here we go!  Really cool how high it goes up.  Do you see the poles on the right?  That's power lines running from Alabama over to the island.  It was quite strange.

As soon as you get on the island you see this water tower.  We finally made it!  On a side note, our trip down was the best long distance drive we've ever had with the kids.  The timing was great and they enjoyed playing the license plate game.

Deja' Vu...our beach house for the week!  This is the picture from the road.  See how close the ocean is in the background?  So cool!  The house has 4 bedrooms & 4 bathrooms & a great layout for 2 families.

Group shot from the beach facing side of the house!  We hung out on the porch often and the shower on the steps was great.  We still had a ton of sand in the house but the shower helped.  Under the house was a small deck.  The kids spent a lot of time down there playing and putting on performances.

Silly group photo!

Our first night on Dauphin Island at sunset.  The island is full of beautiful beach houses.  There were only 2 condo buildings on the island and both were only about 3 stories high. 

Eli & Tyler were running up and down just taking it all in.  What a beautiful way to start our vacation.