Florida explore

After an amazing night of sleep, courtesy of 4 or so hours on the beach the day before, it was time for us to explore a bit. The morning was cooler, mid-50s. Which still felt great on our Minnesota winter skin. Our friends flew in the night before and things were delayed and a little messy with their flight, so they had a few things to take care of.  Our family decided to use the morning to check out Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park. I have started to have a little "thing" for state parks since moving back to Minnesota and seeing all the cool, unique ones we have. This was our first Florida state park. It was really neat, but I will have to say: If you want the beach, you go to Florida.....If you want a cool hiking trail, it is not the first place I would look. BUT after being in either a mini-van or hotel room for the past few days....we needed a place to get out and move!!  So we still enjoyed our first hiking experience in Florida:

Sorry Caleb....Mom is still working on the whole "selfie" thing.....

After working up our appetites by hiking and exploring for a bit and running around on the playground it was time to get very tasty, over-priced hotdogs at this cute place.....Don't go to Destin without stopping here....very fun and hotdogs were tasty!

But enough of that, it was time to check into our condo!!  YAY!! My friend Angelyn found this online way back in October when we started "Florida dreaming".  It was right on the beach, perfect for us as we wanted to spend as much time there....even if it wasn't as warm as we hoped for.  This afternoon was in the 60s....still pretty nice for beach time!

Andie and Nora were so cute all week.  I think the girls most consistently, braved the weather to go in the water.  Andie has always wanted a little sister and I think Nora had fun with Andie being a big sister type to her all week.

All the kids enjoying the beach:

First night in our condo gave us our best sunset of the week:

Our awesome friends who got the ball rolling on this whole trip in the first place!!  Craig and I kept saying:  We haven't done something like this before:  gone on a trip with friends, stayed in a condo on the GULF OF MEXICO, driven 20 hours to vacation somewhere, etc, etc.  Thank you guys for inviting us along on this crazy and fun adventure!!

Throughout the week I didn't have too many goals but one goal I did have was to carve out a little time alone with each of my school-aged kids.  So that night Isaac and I went walking on the beach for awhile.  He is a little more physical so a slow meander turned into sprinting contests and not so much talking but we had some good one on one time that first night on the beach.