Sunrise Sunset

Chris and I celebrated 5 whole years together last weekend by watching the sunrise and sunset on the horizon in the same day. We started out in Daytona in a hotel on the beach with a beautiful view of the Atlantic. We were originally given a 2nd floor room and they moved us to the 7th floor thank goodness. It was a truly breathtaking view. Nice to be able to look for miles and miles and see nothing man made. As a man in the hotel lobby said, "God knew what He was doing when he created beaches." If we have to be so far away from family, at least we have our pick of beaches to visit.

These two were so cute. I think they liked the trip as mush as we did. 

The beautiful sunrise from our balcony. It would have been fun to walk on the beach, but we were letting our kiddos sleep a little longer. After the sunrise we ate a delicious breakfast downstairs and jumped in the pool while waiting for Chris to get the beach stuff from the car. Seth was in need of a nap, so he wasn't really up for much besides snuggling (no complaints here), but James was all for jumping in the water and playing. Actually, he did jump in the water with his floaties on and his head went under the water. He didn't have the desire to jump in again like that. Haha! I'm glad he got a little humbled around the water. He did make it very clear that he wanted to swim by himself, however. 

"I'm surfing."

Oh, how I love thee!!! You handsome man you!!!

A few minutes before he fell asleep in my arms :) 

James and I played a game of tag. 

Our hotel. 

After playing on the beach, we went back up to the pool, rinsed off in the shower and finished rinsing off in the hot tub :) We got another plate of food from breakfast and James ate most of it. Then we showered and headed to the Gulf side of Florida. 

One last look from the balcony. 

This guy has been looking for Mint Chocolate Cookie Ben and Jerry's for some time now and we found it at the gas station we stopped at. It was fun to all grab a spoon and share. James kept trading spoons with us. We gave him the last tiny bit and the kid practically licked the thing clean. Good thing I try not to give him treats that often.

Seriously, has it been 5 years already? Good thing I get eternity with this guy :) 

We got ice cream, Seth got a peach. 

After getting to Clearwater, we were all a little frazzled from screaming kids. The rest of our trip didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked, and we got back way way way later than we hoped to, but we're chalking it up to another learning experience. I think we are the type of people to try and pack in as many fun things as we can in one day. Not such a great plan when small children are involved. Pretty sure we'll keep trying it though. I figure it's a good patience builder and the kids won't be small forever, right? We did decide that we need to take time to regroup and get on the same page before marching off into the unknown with emotions blazing. Good thing we have eternity to work on that as well. 

We stumbled across a ferry that was the highlight of this portion of the trip. We paid $16 to ride the ferry round trip to the beach and paid $0 for parking our car. We didn't have to run back and pay a meter and we didn't have to spend forever in traffic getting to the beach. James even got to ride a 'boat.' He was all sorts of cute. 

Seth was just along for the ride and needing another nap. 

They had a pretty cool play area for kids away from the beach. I could see James eyeing this part, so I thought I'd better teach him before he decides to do it himself and fall off the top. He caught on and tried 3 more times successfully and then he could move on the next area. 

The water was so warm here and James just wanted to play in it. I didn't bring any of the swim stuff though so we didn't play. Kind of silly, not to bring swimsuits to a beach, but I didn't want to hassle with changing all over again. He waded into the water anyways, and then had to spend the rest of the evening wet. Oh well, at least it's Florida and stayed 80 degrees :) 

They have the same scrunchy eyebrows. 

The sunset. A cloud blocked most of the sun, but it was still pretty. 

My adorable little sand baby. I was trying to keep him out of the sand, but I am oh so glad he won this battle. I got some priceless photos. I tried to pick the best ones to post, but I can't choose so you get all of them. 

Of course he tried eating the sand, but only a few times, then he gave up. 

My little sand man completely covered from head to toe with sand. 

Got sand in his eye, and it was my fault because I put his sandy hat on him. Sorry buddy. 

Like father like sun. 

We finished up by eating at a restaurant because we both thought that's what the other one wanted. Inside our heads we were thinking, "it's late, we should grab something fast and go home, but I know she/he was really looking forward to eating out." Haha! Good thing after 5 years that we are still trying to do things the other one wants to. It was a pretty terrible dinner experience. The kids were tired and cranky. The place was way too loud and my head was pounding. But...the food was good. Well, except for James' food. He wouldn't eat his grilled cheese because it wasn't melted (we even had them take it back and cook it longer), but mostly because it was fake american cheese. I guess I can call that the silver lining in all of this. My three year old won't eat fake cheese. The fact that his dad is the world's best grilled cheese sandwich maker probably didn't help matters either. We then had to wait 45 minutes for the ferry, but I suppose it wasn't all bad. We took turns holding Seth, mostly because he kept grabbing whoever wasn't holding him when we got too close. We got back to the car, put the kids in pj's and drove the 2 hours home. We left everything in the car and decided to just shower in the morning. It was a memorable trip and we all took a two hour nap the next day. Nothing like needing a vacation from your vacation. Perhaps, by our 10th anniversary we will live close enough to family to leave the kids with relatives and go on a cruise or something. We've always talked about seeing a sunrise and sunset on the beach in the same day and now we can say that we have. It was fun weekend!