Spontaneous Road Trip

 We went on a spontaneous road trip right after Christmas.  Sunday morning we talked about leaving and going "somewhere".......Sunday night we were loaded up and driving to Orange Beach.  Ha!  We didn't even have a place to stay finalized yet (we had booked a VRBO, but they hadn't confirmed yet).  The car was loaded up to it's full potential for 6 days away.  We have never been a road trip family before, but that was the only way for us to go somewhere in 2020.  Second road trip in one year (we did Colorado earlier in the year).  It is so nice to have everything you need with you.  While driving I did a Walmart grocery pick up order in Orange Beach, so we had everything we needed for the week.  As we are still being pretty cautious with COVID we tried to come up with a location where we can be outside and keep our distance and just have a nice change of scenery.  A condo on beach was the perfect solution.  The pools were closed at the facility we went to, but the condo had a hot tub on the balcony, so we really just moved from the condo to the beach and back to the hot tub every day.  

You CANNOT beat this view!

We walked down to the beach as soon as we got there and it felt so amazing (and a little chilly) to put our toes in the sand.  We actually had great weather for the days we were there.  

It's the best way to social distance :)

We walked for a long time.....

Pictures of the ocean never get old to me.

That is Evan running through the water.  I had set the expectations low for the kids and told them it was not going to be swimming weather.  Well, Evan and Nora proved me wrong.  I would shiver if the cold water hit my feet and they both went all in and swam for quite some time while I was sitting there with 3 layers of clothes on :)

Hannah doing what she does every day.....lots of time upside down

We went up to the condo every day to have lunch and then came back down to walk some more and build more sand castles....

......then it was hot tub time on the balcony to watch the sunset.  I could get used to that daily routine.

New day, same routine......it was not busy at all, which was amazing.

Our condo

We picked up fresh seafood to grill for every dinner and it was so good.  I could get used to that too!

We built lots of sand castles....

The ocean air was great for Nora's curls......

Happy New Year from the 5 of us (you can see me in the mirror).  

We grilled a seafood feast for dinner, had some bubbly (adult and kid friendly), played games and watched the ball drop east coast time and went to bed (some of us didn't make it to the east coast ball drop, but I won't mention any names).

We built this creation a little too close to the water and in the afternoon the tide was coming in and we had to try and divert the water from the sand castle.  This was right up Evan's alley and he worked SO hard to divert the water and save the sand castle.  He wouldn't stop digging around it.

Here he is digging around the castle.....

More sunset......we switched it up and went down to the beach on that day.

We had such a good week down there.