It was a chilly day on the beach...

So. Vacation. Let me first say that a 14-hour road trip with small kids is not fun. Not. Fun. However, we did it. We survived. And then we settled in for a week of fun in the warm sun. Warm. Hahahahahaha! Well, it started out warm. Palm Sunday got into the 70s. But it was windy. And the wind was coming off of the gulf, so our glasses were quickly covered in salty water and it was impossible to see. And Martin hated the wind. And then it got cold and windy. For three whole days.

Cold. And also windy.

We spent those three days doing things that were non-beach related, mostly. Although Olivia made it down to the beach nearly every day with one of us for at least an hour or so. She didn't mind the cold if we just gave her some buckets and let her play in the sand. But since it was so freezy cold, we went to a movie on Monday.  (Oz, which turned out to be rather loud and scarier than I would have expected from a PG movie.) On Tuesday we spent the entire day at WonderWorks, which is just a really expensive Children's Museum. Olivia loved it. She especially liked the ropes course. She was rather good at it.

Death-defying balancing act, except for the harness.

Thursday and Friday finally brought some decent beach weather. Thursday was also our day to take a pirate cruise, which was perfect for Olivia's age group.

Aaarrrr!!

A family of pirates

Olivia enjoyed the beach very much, cold or warm. When we wouldn't let her in the water, she just busied herself with the task of moving sand from here to there or picking up sea shells.

Olivia and her ever-present sand bucket.

Friday was the perfect beach day. The wind had finally died down and it was warm, so we ventured out to the beach as a family.

Martin re-affirms his hatred for water touching any part of his body.

Dry sand, however, is a perfectly acceptable medium for playtime.

Mommy puts her feet in the water as Martin looks skeptically at the waves.

Olivia is not at all afraid to get wet.

Overall, a very nice week. Although it was colder than normal, the sky was bright and clear all week, allowing Olivia to get quite a tan. The kid absolutely soaks in the sun. Martin took lots of naps and woke up every day at 6 a.m., sharp. Joe and I are completely worn out from vacation and from driving with kids and from the horrible excuse for a mattress on the bed in our rental house bedroom.

Back saver. Liars.

This photo represents our somewhat-successful attempt to make the bed sleep-able. We pulled the two twin mattresses off of the roll-away beds in the garage and put them on top of the bed. We actually slept a little better for the rest of the week. And then the owners of our rental showed up (and stayed in their own vacation house next door) and decided to replace the mattress on our last day there. So we had a brand-new and much better mattress for our last night.

Oh, and then there was this. There are these planes that fly over the beach pulling advertisement banners. This was the one we kept seeing. Classy, no?

I wonder how many Spring Breakers now regret falling prey to this advertisement.

And that was Spring Break 2013. It may have been a bit chilly on the beach, but it was snowing at home. So, overall, we win Spring Break. Hooray!


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Also, I had scheduled this to post on Saturday, March 23rd, but blogger did something weird and it didn't post. The day we left for vacation, Martin turned 8 months old.

This little guy is eight months old.

He was giving me his Elvis lip. I missed it by a millisecond. But still, cute.

Such a big boy! *Sniff*