Beach Bunnies and low Batteries

My little Easter babies enjoying their loot.

Karson looking tired from getting up at the crack of dawn!

Miles has started posing for photos.

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Easter Sunday we heard the pitter patter of Karson's feet at about 6 a.m. We kept hearing her sneak down the hall, run back to her room and close (slam) the door. After about three rounds of this, we decided it was time to GET UP AND GET GOING =). She loved her basket and all her goodies. I decided to get the boys up around 6:45 so I could take some photos and Karson could FINALLY tear into her basket. The morning was chaotic as usual, but it felt busier on Easter Sunday. Here are some fun photos from the day.
The un-traditional Easter photos in front of our fireplace. Since we had nothing in bloom at our home and it was ice cold outside, we took our Easter pics. inside the warm, cozy house.

After church Sunday, we went to my parents house and celebrated my Dad's birthday. He shares a birthday with Ms. Windy on March 26 (and who we surprised at church on Sunday with a amazing cake by Larie, a gift basket full of nifty gifties and a bouquet of flowers). It was birthday party central. After the party for Dad, Matt and I left for a kids-free vacation to Destin with Shannon and Paul (sans kids also). It's the first trip we've taken since Karson's birth.
I've tried my best to chronicle our beach events.

Please don't feel like you have to read the post below, it's mainly for memory purposes.

My camera battery was dead so I was only able to snap a few photos.

Our home away from home.

The weather was perfect, and the ocean was beautiful.

My husband is very strong and quite handsome!

DAY 1: Matt and Paul golfed at Indian Bayou. Shannon and I hit the outlet malls and set up appointments for spa treaments the next day. We also hit all the local beachy stores like WINGS and Beach Zone. Shannon LOVES these places. They are fun. It's amazing how many trinkets they can actually pack into these shops. You can own lovely finds such as sharks in a jar, string CORONA bikinis, crocodile skulls, hermit crabs, toes rings-or if you're feeling crazy, you can get a hair wrap or henna tattoo. Shannon is like a kid in candy store looking at t-shirts =). Paul and I went half-zies on the buy 1 get 1 free sweatshirts. He had been sporting my Mom's red WKU sweatshirt due to the chilly weather. We ate at P.F. Chang's that evening for dinner. My awesome sweatshirt.

DAY 2: The weather was still a bit chilly but that didn't stop the major sun goddesses. Shannon and I aren't those and went to Avantgarde Aveda Spa and Salon. I wish I could say that we felt pampered and relaxed, but the whole experience was quite tortourous. We had both scheduled a customized facial and body polish. Both sounded amazing in their descriptive language in the brochure. The actual experience was quite different. The body polishing felt like someone rubbing sandpaper all over your nude (yes, that's right) body. I'm not sure if it was the masseur or the product, but it was sheer agony. Shannon did the body polish first and wanted to warn me about the intense pain but didn't have a chance. Meanwhile, I was having a facial which I was excited about because of the extraction. I was thinking extraction meant they were going use a machine to extract all the yucky oils and dead skin cells in my face. WRONG--the esthetician started popping black heads, AHHHH. I do my share of face picking but certainly wasn't expecting this from a spa tech. When Shannon had her facial and I was being skinned alive in the body polish, the esthetician broke the viewing mirror over her face and almost decipitated my sister. Overall, we gave the spa two thumbs way down. Shannon made a yummy enchilada casserole for dinner which helped soothe our aching bodies =). We hit Hurricane Lanes for some bowling after dinner. Shannon bowled the game high 201. Since we hadn't competed enough at the alley, we came back to the condo and played Scrabble. I won that round =).

DO NOT visit this spa.

DO visit Hurricane Lanes for pain-free fun.

DAY 3: The guys went golfing at Regatta Bay, and Shannon and I layed out on the beach all day. We ate a Captain Dave's on the Gulf for dinner, watched Disturbia and played Yahtzee that night. No real exciting events of the day, but Matt and I made a late night run to Wally World for toys. We were missing the kids and decided we needed gifts for them. We bought Karson a Fairytopia Barbie and Isaac two monster trucks. I bought Miles a cool water ball at Beach Zone on Monday which is sure to be busted with his sharp teeth.

Enjoying our dinner at Captain Dave's.

DAY 4: We spent most of the day on the beach. I've collected a myriad of seashells this week. I'm doing children's church on Sunday and thought the kids might want a cool seashell from the beach. We're talking about fishing and making fishing poles. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner and played miniature golf at The Track. Shannon and I decided to go back to the outlet malls and dropped the guys off for Louisville/Tennessee basketball. Barf!!! I would rather be at the Persecution Spa than watch college basketball on TV, but I was proud of our Hilltopper's for hanging with UCLA.

DAY 5: We beached it up again and decided to come back home. We had planned on staying through Saturday but decided we'd rather drive in the afternoon/evening than leave the following morning. We had a very nice, quiet, peaceful, relaxing vacation. It's nice to break free of the daily chaos of life and retreat to somewhere warm and restful and FREE (thanks David and Beth).