Our First BIG Trip (part 5- the last one!)

Day 8- Going Home

On our last morning, we woke up to more beautiful sunshine and went down to the beach to find that it was covered in gorgeous shells!  Haley told me "Mom, God did something nice for us and put shells all over the place for our last day here".  He sure did.  We had so much fun collecting tons of shells (I decided that from now until we run out of shells, they will be the present for every birthday party the girls are invited to) and boogie boarding and floating in the water.  The beach had a sandbar about 50 yards out and in between the beach and the sandbar the water was like a lake.  It was up to the kids shoulders, but they were fine to play in it because there were no waves.  We did a lot of floating in there!

Abby is holding a HUGE clam that Laura found (still alive)!

Haley and Laura found all these crab shells:)

There was a hose and shower head just off the boardwalk to rinse off the sand before going back in the condo complex.

Haley's shell collection!

Our trip home was fairly uneventful. On our long flight, from Atlanta to San Fransisco, we had been assigned 6 seats scattered all over the plan, which Delta, on the phone, assured me that they would fix once we were at the airport.  Unfortunately, that wasn't true, so getting on that plane was a little stressful.  We were rushing onto the plane anyway, because our connecting flight was slightly late and landed in a different part of the airport.  But, people very kindly traded with us and we managed to end up in 3 groups of one adult, one child!  The only other snafu with our trip home is that our checked suitcase didn't make the connecting flight, so they had to deliver it to us the next day.  Thankfully, the three boosters did make it to SFO with us, so it really wasn't so bad!

We had the most incredible trip.  It was definitely different than our expectations, but we had a blast and loved being on a beach on the other side of the country.  Oh, one other funny little thing you might want to know is that Haley kept saying things like "What time is it here?  And what time is it in our world?" or "Hey, we have that store in our world"!  So cute!

Our First BIG Trip (part 4)

Day 6- Laura's 30th Birthday

On Thursday we woke up to a glorious morning!  It was sunny and beautiful outside.  It was Laura's birthday present from the Lord.  We were definitely SO thankful for a warm, sunny beach day, which was what we had been expecting the whole trip would be like!  We spent all morning and afternoon on the beach and it was AWESOME!  We all did some boogie boarding, and Abby became the queen of the sport!  Oh, and the Webber children got their first sunburns!  Abby pretty much thought she was going to die!  She was so dramatic about it.  Seth looked like a raccoon because he kept rubbing his eyes and it rubbed all the sunscreen off!  And I realized that when I re-applied the sunscreen after a couple hours at the beach I think all the sand that I rubbed around with it ended up scrubbing it off.  That east coast sand is so fine and it just doesn't rub off!  I can assure you that they all survived the sunburns!

That night for dinner we went to the best restaurant EVER!  It's called Saltwater Cowboys and it is like a southern dream.  It's on a marsh and it looks like you stepped into the bayou!  There was a stuffed raccoon holding a fishing pole right as we walked in, and all the chairs and tables looked like they were made of random branches someone found on the ground.  We sat out on the deck and had yummy fresh shrimp, sweat tea and fried gator tail!  Our waiter was a darling southern boy and Abby really liked him.  At one point during dinner Abby said (as she was looking straight at our waiter) "Mom, I miss Pete.  Pete the Pirate.  Our dog who's at home in California."  I asked her if she was talking to me or the waiter and she said "Okay, I'll tell the secret.  I like when people pay attention to me."  Not such a secret Abby!  We all burst out laughing!  

A little tired after a long day at the beach!

Day 7- Our Last Full Day

On our last full day in Florida we spent our time at the beach and the pool.  We had another wonderful morning on the beach and this time went back to the condo for a little break from the sun and for lunch.  We visited our turtle friend (there were some gopher tortoises that lived in the dunes) and collected lots of fun shells.  In the late afternoon we went to Fort Matanzas, which is a fort that was built to protect St. Augustine against someone...I forgot who it was and when it was built.  It was super hot and I was not feeling very well!  Anyway, we rode a little ferry boat out to it and explored a bit.  It was the kids' first time on a boat.  As we left the fort, my cold was getting the better of me (I had been fighting a cold the whole time, but trying to be in denial of it), so we went back to the condo and Laura and Carey took the kids to the pool and I rested in quiet!  Not really the way I was hoping to spend our last night there, but at least I could hear everyone having fun down at the pool:)

Outside the fort!

Seth was really into the cannons and wanted to play pirate the whole time we were at the fort!

On our very hot ferry ride!

Our First BIG Trip (part 3)

Day 4- We Hit "The Wall"

On Tuesday of our trip, we woke up to Tropical Storm Debbie still in full force.  I think it was the night before that the storm was so loud it kept waking me up.  I have never heard wind that loud in my entire life.  I have no idea how it didn't rip the roof off the building!  Anyway, Laura and I decided to take the kids to the beach and fly kites.  It was not our best idea!  It was WAY too windy to fly kites and the kids were crabby and not listening well.  We went back to the condo and we all kind of "hit the wall".  The trip had been so stormy and everyone was disappointed but had been trying to make the best of it.  I was D-O-N-E with the girls being rude and disobedient and Seth's whining (plus I was super tired).  All I remember is going to lay down and try and nap (I suck at napping) and getting up a bit later to all three kids sleeping/resting, Laura gone on a walk (on which she saw a fox sitting in the dunes) and Carey enjoying the condo's cable tv!  

After our early afternoon, mid-trip meltdown, we were all feeling better and decided to head to "old town".  I can't remember if I've already said this, but St. Augustine is the oldest founded city in America, so there's lots of history and (more importantly to us) cute/neat old buildings!  We saw the nation's oldest wooden schoolhouse, went to an old fashioned candy shop (I feel like I should spell it "shoppe"!), found more lizards, and saw a Mary Poppins-ish street performer!  While we were there, the weather was alternating between really hot and pouring down rain, with the consistent windyness, of course!  At one point, it was pouring down rain, there was still some things the adults wanted to see, Abby was screaming crying about buying a horse necklace, and we didn't know which way to go.  I noticed we were standing right next to the church of St. Augustine (the saint the city was named after).  The sign on the door said people were welcome to go in but to be respectful of people who might be praying in there.  I told the kids to be quiet and we went on in, expecting to run out in two seconds because the kids would yell or something.  It was like a magical building.  It was huge and beautiful and so different than any church building my kids have been in, there were so quiet and in awe.  They loved hearing about what the different parts were (sidenote: Abby had asked me about the two doors that led to the confessional, so I told her about it.  Once we were home, she was telling my sister, Auntie Melissa, about the church and she told her "And they had these doors you go in and there is a man who goes in the other one and you say like 'I disobeyed my mom' or something like that.  But we don't have that at our church").  We were in there for a good 15 minutes or so, just enjoying the beauty of it.  And, when we walked out, the rain had stopped and it was sunny!

The street performer...who proceeded to make it half-way through a song and then break 2 strings at the same time!

Loving the entertainment!

The oldest wooden school house:)

Inside the gorgeous, tear-stopping, quiet inducing, rain-stopping St. Augustine church!

Day 5- An End In Sight

On Wednesday, good old Debbie seemed to be on her way out and the beach days we were expecting were seeming more like a reality!  We tried the kites once again, this time with more success!  Well, Carey had success; Laura, not so much, although it was hilarious to watch her kite!  We did some playing on the beach and in the pool and were so happy to see the sun out by the end of the day:)

Ready to go fly some kites!

These three kids are ready for the sun!

Our First BIG Trip (part 2)

Day 2- Carey's birthday

Our first morning in the condo, Laura and I took the kids straight down to the beach, so Carey could keep sleeping.  We walked out of the condo complex onto a boardwalk over the dunes down to the beach.  Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to walk out to the beach on one of those boardwalks.  I can't even explain how excited I was to actually be walking on one.  I felt like a little girl meeting princesses at Disneyland for the first time!  It was surreal!  Despite the fact that it was cloudy and windy, it was plenty warm at the beach and we had a blast playing in the warm ocean water.  We even invented a couple games:

1)"Knocked Over"- you sit at the ocean's edge and every time a wave hits you, no matter how tiny, it knocks you over!

2) "Dead Squid"- in the super shallow water you lay down and just roll around however the ocean pulls and pushes you, just like it does to a dead squid!

The boardwalk!!!

First time in the Atlantic!

Awesome St. Augustine shells:)

Seth was the inventor of "dead squid"!

After a couple hours at the beach, we spent some time in the pool at the condo.  After a little while at the pool, we all headed up to the condo, ready for naps, and walked in just as Carey was getting up!

After naps we ran a few errands; grocery store, Dollar Tree for sand toys, fish market (at which Abby and Haley were thrilled to touch a huge dead fish, eyeballs and all, that the kind fish market lady brought out for them), and the cutest little cupcake shop!  Back at the condo we enjoyed the cupcakes and then headed back down to the beach.  At that point, we had been informed (by all the weather stations) that the bad weather was thanks to tropical storm "Debbie", and she poured rain down on us and tried to blow us away as we played at the beach.  I think that afternoon, playing in the water in the pouring down rain was one of our favorite memories!  We finally went inside when the rain was pouring down hard enough to hurt our skin!

Yummy cupcakes on the balcony!

Day 3- Alligator Farm and Tropical Storm Debbie!

One thing we knew we wanted to do in Florida was to go to the Alligator farm, and since tropical storm Debbie was out in full force, we decide to start doing the things that we wanted to do in the beginning of the week and hope for sunny beach days towards the end of the week.  Laura and I started the day off taking Abby and Seth down to the beach while Carey and Haley slept in.  We wore dresses but were laughing as we walked back to the condo, because it had rained so hard that we might as well have worn swim suits!  We were literally wringing water out of our dresses.  We could not have been any wetter if we had gone swimming!  After the wet trip to the beach, we spent a slow morning in the condo.  Laura's mom, the fabulous Julia, had stocked it up with all sorts of treats for us (as well as necessities like laundry detergent and shampoo), making it super fun and cozy.  The condo itself was awesome.  It is two bedrooms and I'm pretty sure it is bigger than our whole house.  It has a great balcony that looks out onto the beach and ocean, too!

This is a pile of all the cookies that Julia had baked for us!

 We spent the rest of the day at the Alligator farm.  It was kind of like a small zoo, with about a billion alligators and birds, some snakes and lizards (Laura and I opted out of that part), and some cute little monkeys and things.  We had a lot of fun there, and I decided that I would like to be an alligator.  They just lounge around all day, and the bigger they are, the more impressive they are!

Looking at baby alligators and turtles!

This was a "pen" of 41 alligators!

We kept seeing these little frogs all over the zoo.  They are so tiny (that's Haley's hand) that it looks like tons of little bugs jumping around!  Haley caught a ton of them (an activity that not all of the frogs survived)!