Our Vacation: Part 1 Destin, Florida

Destin, Florida

Oh there are so many many things I want to share about our trip! We had such a blast taking our girls on our first "real" family vacation! We first spent a week in Destin, Florida on the beach! It was amazing! I saw dolphins within in the first 5 minutes! I am embarrassed to admit I almost yelled "shark" when I saw the fin come out of the water initially! Oh thank God I waited a minute and watched! After watching for a second I was able to see it was a pod of dolphins swimming by! Boy you should have seen everyone jump as I yelled out, "look dolphins!" Good thing it wasn't shark that almost flew out of this mouth bahahaha! I would've been run off that beach for sure!

We had a great time laying on the beach and playing in the ocean! The water was gorgeous and warm. It truly begged you to jump in and play in it! We were blessed with perfect weather the entire time!

We stayed in a condo in Santa Rosa Beach. This was a really fun place to stay! It sat on top of a really fun 'artsy" shopping center. This center had funky beach shops and cool restaurants. It was right across the street from the beach. I loved waking up in the morning, having my coffee on the deck and looking at the ocean! This was a TRUE highlight of our  trip for me! We spent a day with our friends who were also there vacationing at Shell Island. This island is INCREDIBLE and I highly recommend going there if you vacation in Destin. You can rent your own pontoon boat or take the ferry to get there. Our friends rented a boat to take over to the island . The boat trip was a lot of fun! Once we got there we hiked a bit to find the perfect place to set camp. It was like being on a deserted island filled with white sand and crystal clear water! We played on the beach and took the kids snorkeling! Snorkeling was a BLAST! I swam with a HUGE school of fish! There were hundreds! We saw so many different sea creatures. I think I could spend the rest of my life snorkeling!

I also got to ocean kayak! That was incredible! I HIGHLY recommend doing this if your able too! The kayak's were much cheaper to rent on the beach per hour than from one of the rental stores. I have always been scared to kayak so I decided to take this as an opportunity to "face my fears!" I figured if I went down it wasn't a bad place to go, white sand, warm crystal clear water ... bahahaha I'm kidding (kinda =). However, I must say I know I looked ridiculous with the life jacket buttoned up to my chin! You don't want to know how tight I wore that life vest! (for all you who know me, well I'm sure you just got quite a chuckle=)

Sean and Meg went parasailing! They said it was amazing! Megan said she saw dolphins all over the place! I really regret not doing this! If we ever go back I will do that next time. I have a fear of heights so I didn't do it. I truly regret not facing that fear!

One of the night's  we went to Sea Side to have dinner at a famous taco stand off 30A. This is where they filmed The Truman Show. It was really cool and looked just like it did in the movie! We found a man passed out or knocked out on the ground!! That was quite scary! Were not sure exactly what happened, but were thankful that we had walked by and found him so we could get help!. He was breathing praise God but wouldn't come too! My friend Jay called 911 and waited until help arrived. It appeared that he fell trying to get on his bike! We never found out what happened to him but pray everything was ok! 

The Marina. The last night we were there we went to the Marina! That was one of the coolest places we went! To go down and look at all the cool shops, watch them weigh the fish coming in off the fishing boats, and look at all the different boats in the docks!  It was a blast! Megan did a "human hamster ball!" I have the whole thing of video and it's hysterical!! I wish we had spent more time there! If we go back this is definitely one place I would like to spend more time at!

Ghost Crab hunting. I almost forgot! At night you can take a flash light and walk the beach to find ghost crabs! This was so much fun! Little Luke caught an entire bucket full! We were really enjoying watching all of them until they got really "crabby" and had a huge crab fight! It was quite disturbing and we had to let them all go!


 as you can see we had a great time in Destin!  I think for a beach vacation we did it very reasonably priced! We stayed in a place with a full kitchen right next to the ocean. We ate breakfast in the condo and were able to pack lunches everyday and walk to the beach. we really didn't eat out. We decided if we were going to spend money we wanted it to be on things that would build memories. Besides, one you start to coupon it's really hard to eat out and pay those ridiculous prices ... hehehe!  We did pick one "popular" place to eat dinner for part of our experience but beyond that we would come home and eat dinner. I love to cook so cooking in a "new kitchen" is always a treat for me. I actually look forward to it!

I also love to grocery shop and "coupon" in new places. I was so excited to get to go to Publix. I'm not gonna lie, I made Paige take a picture of me in front of  Publix. You can imagine my poor teenage daughter! Yes, she was mortified! I even held my binder up =)

 Shopping at Publix REALLY made me appreciate Dillons! The store itself is INCREDIBLE!! They have an amazing selection that's much larger than what we have. However, the coupon policy is NOT as generous as ours and is far more of a hassle! Due to all the coupon fraud the lady took every coupon I had and laid it out on the counter!!  She then proceeded to ring every item up and as she would do that, she would stop, and look for coupons and then read EVERY coupon that matched every item! It took FOREVER!! I ended up  spending $65.00 and walked out with 3 bags of groceries! Now you know what we can do with $65.00 at Dillons ladies! Yikes!! I will say it was a great experience, and I am so glad I got to do it, but I am truly thankful for my Dillons and all the wonderful checkers and managers that work there! I like shopping where "everyone knows my name" =)  (it's like Cheers tehehehe) I just LOVE my Dillons and am blessed by all I save there each week! I must say when I got back in town I had to go shop at my Dillons and tell the manager all about my Publix trip! They were cracking up at me and told me they missed me when I was out of town =) I told them I missed them more LOL!!

I can't wait to share with you about my Orlando trip! I learned about a very well kept secret that I can't wait to share! It's for all the music lovers and music memorabilia fans out there!