Must Haves for long car drive:
- Binders with work pages for the kids
- A map of the USA & they can color which states they have gone thru
- Polaroid Camera - we got ours at Michael's - the girls loves using this for our trip
- candy
- clear markers
- movies
We made our way down to Florida. We first stopped in Nashville to see some friends & it was so nice to have the kids run around & eat good food.
When we made it to Santa Rosa Beach we first stopped at the Walmart to grab our food for the week. Anissa & I planned out our meals & what each one of us would need to get. Our condo we stayed at was the Allegro beach side, we were on the 3rd floor with an amazing view of the ocean. It was one of my favorite parts sitting on the balcony at night listening to the ocean & storms roll in. We had two pools to choose from & of course the kids would always decide which one they wanted to go to.
About a 5 minute drive down the road was Sea Side + Water Color Beach we enjoyed going there for lunch to eat the food trucks & look around the shops. By far our favorite food truck was Melt - I had the bacon jam grilled cheese that was to die for. The kids always wanted to hit up Frost Bite for snow cones.
At night after dinner the three older kids would go crabbing on the beach with their flash lights & nets. We bought glow sticks & necklaces from Dollar Tree to keep track of them (there were a lot of fun in the pool at night to dive after). The condo we stayed in had great games for us adults to play after the kids all went down. We even got up before sunrise one more to go play at the beach & watch the sun rise over the water.
One day we headed into Destin for a dolphin tour. Let's just say we didn't even have to pull out of the no wake zone before we saw 3 dolphins + a baby dolphin. I personally thought we would go out for an hour and not see one thing. Shark were also putting on a show for us & all the tourist that started to huddle around them (I was terrified someone was going to fall off their wave runner trying to look for them). Our middle, Juliana ended up getting sea sick really bad (it took her 3 days to get over). We still kept going even though she would get sick in certain place :) we decided to drive one day to Rosemary Beach and it was beautiful can't wait to go back & stay there sometime.
Our last night in Florida was the Olympic opening ceremony. Anissa & I planned little crafts for the kids to do. First was making torches out of tissue paper (pinterest here). Then cupcakes they decorated with icing + fruit loops to make the Olympic Rings. My mom bought medals for each one of the kids.
We had so much fun on this vacation & it was truly a great time by all & a perfect way to end the summer before school started.
