Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Oh man! Almost over
















It's almost time to leave vacation and come home. I'd be ready if it weren't for the stinky weather back home. Looks like we're leaving our sunny, breezy, wonderful weather for rain!  We found a great place to stay for the kids.  We're not on the beach, but we're close.  The Caribe resort has a trollie that takes you to the intercoastal beach and it's really nice, pretty, green water.  The waves are a tad calmer there and better for the little ones.  The resort also has a huge pool for our building, an indoor pool for our building and lazy river.  There is also another pool with a water slide and the indoor pools have little waterslides.  All in all this place is really nice and we got to split the cost with our friends.  The room is nice too.  3 bedrooms and 3 bath rooms.  With 4 adults and 6 kids, I can't imagine less.  We've done most of the morning and lunch cooking and a couple of evenings too.  But the kids really wanted to enjoy the seafood, so we've been trying to let them since this is really a treat and we never get to eat out at home.

We've had such a great time.  We've spent LOTS of time at the beach where we quickly found out Jaemin is definitely a brut!  He takes a licking from those waves and just keeps on going.  Though I think we emptied a pound of sand out of his swim diaper and pants pocket.  Jaemin and Chelsi are SUPER tan regardless of our efforts to put tons of lotion on.  I burned regardless of my efforts for myself.  Not bad though.  Cole, Chase and Kaelin have nice little tans going too.  No one can beat out Chelsi and Jaemin's suntan Barbie tans.

The Naval Museum was pretty neat and Jaemin was in stimulus overload with all those airplanes.  I don't think he knew what to do.  He just kept yelling 'airpane', 'airpane'.  He was so, so excited to see all of them and a couple of helicopters.

We spent a morning with my dad since we were only four hours away and hadn't seen him or his wife in 1 1/2 years.  This is the first time they 'really' got to see Jaemin and his 'real' personality since right after he came home from Korea.

The shrimp boat was super fun too.  They touched all kinds of sea life.  Even Jaemin and Chelsi helped feed the small fish to the seagulls after we were done checking out the catches and our deckhand explained what everything was and a little bit about them.

IF you ever come to Orange Beach or Gulf Shores, don't come during the Hangout Music Festival if you have kids.  Not real kid friendly then.  Lots of younger crowds I didn't care to have my kids around.  Do go to Flippers to eat. It's off the beaten path for sure, but awesome atmosphere where you can eat right on the bay, outside.  Free homemade ice cream afterward too!  DeSotos is a great seafood restaurant.  A little expensive, but HUGE meals that are REALLY good.  Live Bait was really good too.  Our friends didn't care for Bubba's lunch.  Dominoes, while cheap and we could eat it at the pool, not worth the 1 1/2 hours and 3 phone calls it took to get it to us.  It was luke warm by the time they arrived.  Needless to say they had to waive the delivery charge.

I brought my good camera and tripod and took our family picture on the beach.  So that's what we're bringing back to the grandparents, wink wink, just so you know.  That's the gifts your getting.  We thought that would be better than a bunch of useless items that say Orange Beach AL.

So our trip is winding down, our house seems to be still standing from what Brian's dad says and we're all getting worn out.  It has been enjoyable though.

Here are the pictures I haven't posted yet; before we head home.

On the drive down.




Room with a view.



First day in the water.

Day 2
Day 3 - Cole has glow sticks on his head and they're throwing a glow ball.  They were just being goofy that night.

Day 4

Sorry, I just enjoyed our day today....no pics!





Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Eye eye Captain!

Shrimp tours are pretty cool.  We did one years ago and decided to do one again.  Chelsi and Jaemin got to actually drive the boat...okay it was a modified pontoon, but they loved it.  Though Jaemin ran us through a sandbar and almost got us stuck. 

We saw our dolphin on the ride, so he was pretty happy.  Sawyer was so excited about the dolphins she saw. 



















Jalapenos! HOTTTTT!

Chase absolutely LOVES jalapenos on everything.  The ones we had tonight, Chase says, were not hot.  However, Jaemin grabbed one off the plate and by the time we all looked at him, his whole face was bright red!  He took it out of his mouth and threw it at Brian like he was the reason his mouth was burnin'  It was SO funny!  Everyone at the table was laughing so hard.  We had to borrow his friend, Sawyer's, milk to calm down the burn in his poor little mouth.

This is from the shop next to the restaurant.  Jaemin wanted in on it too, so after the older 4 did a picture he got his pirate picture taken too.



Sunday, May 22, 2011

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Flips n Flops
















Chelsi had her last night of gymnastics last night.  She gets to progress onto the next class.  So, I guess later this year or next Spring she'll start working more on her cartwheels and eventually learn how to do back handsprings like she wants.  She's just so darn cute in her leo.

Cole had his 8th grade promotion today.  They don't make a huge deal out of it because the gym isn't big enough for all the students to bring more than 1 or 2 family members, at best, so I took off work to go and one of his grandmas was there.  I was glad to see him promote.  Even if he's not at the top of his class, it's just nice seeing him succeed in life, onto the next step.  They had a ton of awards that probably took the first 45 minutes.  It was, um, a little hard on this mommy heart.  Tons of PE awards for things Cole has no chance of earning.  Him not getting an award for good grades is totally his own doing, so while I was a little disappointed he never tried harder, it's okay.  I guess, I too have some getting over to do about his heart and the setbacks of ideals you have in life it may prohibit.  Needless to say, another year down and for that I'm happy.  I love you Cole...even when you think I'm being a mean mom who won't let you do anything, when in reality I'm taking the harder way out to keep you in this world with me as best I can.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

My guitar star

If you turn the channel to CMT and the video has a guitar in it, it's a sure thing for Jaemin to run to his room to get his guitar and play.  He looks so natural and it's so darn cute!