Road Trippin' to Gulf Shores, AL

On Friday afternoon The Cooks, our friends from OK met us for lunch at our house and we hit the road for our beach vacation!  We left Keller as 2 cars with walkie-talkies, 5 kids/4 adults, 2 ipads for kid entertainment, everything to keep a kid happy at the ocean and very little space leftover.  About 9 hours later, we made it to Hattiesburg, MS for the night at a Hampton Inn.  It wasn't luxury accommodations, to say the least.  I wouldn't let Laney on the floor and I never took my shoes off except to get in bed.  But, it served the purpose-we got some sleep before hitting the road the next morning.  We finnnalllyyy arrived in Gulf Shores Saturday afternoon.  Unfortunately we were welcomed with buckets of pouring rain, literally record rainfalls :(  and the forecast wasn't looking promising for the rest of the week.  

Here are some pics I captured on my phone during our many hours in the car, at the hotel and first time at the beach for the kids!

 This was our view of Laney most of the time.

 We played a very modified version of Pictionary.  Adam couldn't even see Cooper's drawings but somehow he always guessed it right?  I believe the picture above (and they all looked pretty similar) was a dolphin.

I squeezed in the backseat for a little while to give Laney some face time.

This was both kids 1st time in a hotel!  Doodles slept in her pack'n'play and Coop on the pull out couch.  That drive must have really worn them out and the late bed time, we had to wake them up the next morning at 8!

 The rain cleared up about 5, so the kids put on their suits and out to the beach we went.  Of course Cooper was all about getting the digger and dump truck down to business.

 It was really windy and Laney didn't like that one bit.  She kept her cocked to the side like in the picture. As for the ocean water, she had no reaction.

Here's the biggest shock...Cooper got in the ocean!  We thought he would be too timid/scared, but he proved us wrong.  

We are having lots of fun-more updates to come.  

ps-the sun has made a few appearances :)