orange beach 1

We've always driven to the beach on Sundays because everybody else goes on Saturday right?!  Well...this year we were having to make the drive on Saturday and we knew it was just going to be crazy!  So...we decided to live Friday afternoon and drive most of the way there and then make the short drive down to the beach early Saturday morning!  

R did great the entire time!  Thank goodness for an iPad!  He only took one little nap and that was all he needed apparently!  I had to teach him how to make your own pillows since he wasn't in his big carseat any more with the padded siding to lay his head on!

Fun stop at Mellow Mushroom!  I had MM for the first time during SB of 2008 in Destin, FL and had wanted it every since!  LR just got one, but I hadn't been yet...so I insisted we eat here when we drove by!  Well...food was okay and let's just say the service was BEYOOOOND horrible and I left my first "feedback" comment on Urbanspoon to let them know exxxxxactly how I felt!  ;)

Waking up and heading to the beach with the rest of the south!  :P  It was literally a RACE to the tunnel!  Craziness...if you've been there on a Saturday, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about!

Semi-healthy stop for lunch at Firehouse and R got a hat for getting a kids meal!  This is a step for us because he usually doesn't want to eat anything!  We made our grocery list during lunch so we could hit the Winn Dixie right behind us before heading to our condo!  It was so nice not having to get back out to get groceries once we got to our condo!

I had told R at home I would get him some sunglasses for our trip...well I couldn't ever find any kid ones!  Winn Dixie to the rescue!  He spotted them and I let him pick out which ones he wanted!  =)

We stayed on the bay side this year.  When we go to the "beach" we usually spend most of our time at the pool anyways...so we decided to try this out for one year and see how we liked it!  We LOVED it!  I don't know if we'll go back to the "beach" for a long time actually--maybe when R is bigger and wants to ride the waves and stuff!  But we LOVED the bay side just as much!  and especially the lazy river!

The night we got there...

The next morning...it was so peaceful and relaxing!  Not nearly as many people as there are at the condos on the beach!

I honestly never laid in a chair all week.  I just floated around that lazy river all day long and was perfectly content!  It took about 3 minutes to get around it if it wasn't crowded and six if there was a crowd!