Foaming at the Mouth for Vacation

I do get some vacation every now and then. I request what month I want off at the beginning of the year and then request the actual dates I want off during that month at a later time. Despite all this my vacation approached last Friday night without any plans. We had batted around a couple different ideas, including the beach, Gatlinburg, St. Louis, or even going to see the Tigers play if they made it that far along. I had been wanting to go to the beach for some time now. The last week I had off was when Allie was born, and before that was back in October when we had some fun in Memphis. I wanted to get out of town. Ultimately, we narrowed it down to the beach or the mountains and let Drew decide. He picked the beach!

We decided last Saturday night, booked the condo as we literally saw them disappearing online, and left Sunday morning. We snuck out of town as my parents said. Somehow we got packed and I got this crew out the door to leave at 8 AM last Sunday morning. The trip was awesome. We had quite an adventure on the way down there. It started with stopping at the slowest gas pumps ever that turned a gas and bathroom trip into a 20 minute stop. However, we also got Drew some powdered donuts that he tore into and gave the title for the post since it looked like he was actually foaming at the mouth.

Then we had lunch in the Southeastern corner of Mississippi where we almost had another famous Mississippi adventure. As we were walking through the parking lot back to the car at Wendy's, a lady with Alabama license plates who must be a mail carrier because they had orange lights on top of their regular car, wasn't looking and almost ran into Katie who had Allie in her arms. The lady had her windows rolled down and I yelled "Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!" It was really directed at Katie as much as it was to this lady. Well, she apparently didn't like this as we could hear her cursing as she pulled out and pulled away. Or at least we thought she pulled away. After we loaded up we saw them parked on the other side of the Wendy's. We went on our way, they didn't pull out right behind us or anything and we kept going. Fastforward to the next small town, now in Alabama, about 40 miles down the road and they are about 10 cars back in a line stopped at a light. I thought I might have to do some good ole Dukes of Hazzard type driving at this point- which meant I had my phone out ready to call the police. We went a few more miles and pulled off into a busy gas station and they eventually went by us. We could see them turn not too much further down the road, but I really don't think they were looking for us or anything. It just kept us on our toes for a bit since it was so odd that they would park on the other side of the Wendy's and then appear behind us again.

Thankfully we made it to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach without any other major incidents, which is a big accomplishment on our first trip with two kids. We threw our stuff in the condo and took Drew down to see the beach. He loved it. I will never forget his smile and excitement seeing it for the first time. We weren't even prepared to get in the water, but he dug in the sand a little and let the water hit his feet. It was already getting a little late and we had to get ready to go to dinner. As we were getting ready we saw the Blue Angels fly past our balcony window right over the shoreline. Drew was amazed and we spent some time looking at videos of them that night. We went to dinner at a place called Wintzell's Oyster House. We had never seen it before, but it said they were one of the oldest restaurants in town. I think they may have recently relocated or something because it was a pretty nice place. I got the oysters which were recommended by Willard Scott apparently and they were pretty good. We went to the grocery store and got stuff for the rest of the week and then had a quiet rest of the evening in the room. Pictures from the first day are below. The rest of the trip will be coming soon in daily installments.

Happy Birthday to my sister, Sarah!