We love Florida and family time hanging out on the beach!

 

 

 

 

“I’m the queen of the world!”

 

Rose contemplating kissing this frog to see if he would turn into a prince.  I love this picture!

 

She almost built up her courage and then quickly went for it.  She said, “He didn’t turn into a prince. Oh well!”

 

Harper and Rose looove to match!  It’s the cutest thing.  After I took their picture, they kept hugging and hugging, squeezing their little cheeks together.  They are so cute!

  

 

 

Even Saylor got in on the action!  She’s almost a big girl, but if you ask her if she’s a big girl or a baby, she’ll say in the sweetest little voice, “A baby!” 

I was sitting on a pool chair watching everyone go off to play in this picture and my heart was so full.  Vacations are good for the soul!

 

Lazy river time!  I scored big on finding a condo with tons of pools, hot tubs and a lazy river, but it back fired!  It was so much fun, the girls wanted to stay at the pool the whole time, so we had to take turns going to the beach in between pool times.   

 

I’ve already written about this night on Instagram, but I’ll briefly describe what happened this night when we went out to catch some waves.

For us, it looked like a calm evening on the beach, no double red flags or anything suspicious.  Mike, John, Noelle and I decided to go boogie boarding.  Mike stayed back on the shoreline watching us, while the three of us went out to board.  I had a weird gut feeling about Noelle needing to stay close to the shore.  I’m not sure why, but I treaded water back and told Mike not to let her go past her waist.  That was right after the picture below was taken. 

If you look closely, you can see near the right of this picture, two waves going perpendicular to the shore.  That was where a rip current was located, just yards away from our girl.  Not sure why I had a weird feeling about Noelle and not myself, but it is what it is.  I went out just past these three waves to ride a wave in, but I got stuck in the rip current that we didn’t know was there at the time.  It kept swirling me around, and I couldn’t make any headway.  I knew to swim sideways but that didn’t help.  Mike saw me struggling and swam out to help me, but he got stuck too.  I flagged down my brother, and he came to pull me out.  I threw him my board, which was connected to my wrist and tried to kick as hard as I could to help him while he was pulling me.  As soon as I made it out, I looked back, and Mike was out too.  To say it freaked us out is an understatement.  It really stinks because we love to boogie board and have done it a lot through the years.  This really messed us up.   

Fortunately, Noelle was building this sand castle and didn’t know what was happening in the ocean in front of her.  We think Tropical Storm Bill had churned everything up, but it never rained once and lots of people were in the water, no warning signs whatsoever, so it didn’t even cross our minds.  The next day, they had red flags on the shoreline and a life guard in the water directing people away from the rip area.  Wish they had found it before we did.  That all said, we were okay and thankful for absolutely everything.  Life is so short, and we were truly reminded of that this night.

They had this flag and a life guard on the shoreline right where we were boarding the next day, but it was a day too late for us!

 

 

Thankful for our beautiful little girls!

 

Our condo had the cutest little kids cave with built in bunk beds, which were a huge hit!

Whew!  I’ve got to admit, I was glad this day was over.  The following day, we took a break from the water, and explored all over 30-A!