Florida Families Vacation

This summer our family joined two others for a week long vacation in South Florida. Justin and 2 of his closest friends turned/turn 40 and the wives decided last year we wanted to celebrate together. So here is the breakdown:

Family 1 - Hometown Atlanta
Frank & Allison
Carl (6), Natalie (5), John (3), and Katherine (18 mos)

Family 2 - Hometown Boston
Adam & Katy
Stephen (2) and Max (4 mos)

Family 3 - Hometown Charleston
Justin & Sara
Brooks (2) and Carly (9 mos)

Yes, that's right. We had a total of 8 children under the age of 6 all together under one roof. Our "beach" house was located on the inter coastal just a few blocks from the ocean. The house itself did not meet our expectations, but we managed to get over the fact that just about every major appliance didn't work and enjoy ourselves.

Justin and I started our car ride down Friday night after work. The total drive time is probably 8 hours without stops. We split our trip down into two days for a couple reasons. One being the kids would sleep a majority of the way to Jacksonville which is about halfway. Our Saturday split took nearly all day, but we took our time and made a few "long" stops along the way. Overall, the kids did very well and any crying was because the movie stopped playing in the car. We also decided to face Carly forward (worth risking a ticket) and you can tell by the picture she felt like a queen.

Chaos started the moment we walked into the house. Thankfully all the kids got along. I didn't see any pushing, hitting or biting. All things I thought for sure might happen. We spent much of the week at the beach or in the pool. The pool ended up being a place where Brooks recorded some major milestones, memories and the site where he learned how to swim underwater. I think the older kids, Carl and Natalie, inspired him to shake off the arm floaties.

 

Brooks still needs to learn how to use his arms instead of kicking like a bullet. Justin became a fan favorite and turned into the buoy in which everyone held onto for dear life. By the end of the week all of the kids lined up along the side of the pool to take their turn jumping in the water.

Even Stephen and Katherine who mostly walked around the pool in life jackets took part in the synchronized swimming.

 

As I mentioned the beach was our other main attraction, a short five minute walk from the house. Getting ready for the morning side activity proved to be challenging packing bags with every necessity, but we managed to scramble fast enough we could get out the door without too many meltdowns. This is a picture of Stephen, Brooks and John pre-beach visit.

Once we got to our spot in the sand we built sand castles, burried body parts, swam in the ocean, boogie boarded and a couple of the kids caught a nap in the shade.

We struggled to find other activities during the week that were as much fun as the pool or beach. We did find an indoor play area called A Latte Fun which provided adults a jolt of coffee while the children bounced off the walls next door. We also spent one of the days at a children's water park. I caught this picture of Carly who LOVED splashing in the water.

Another fun activity the kids enjoyed was walking to the ice cream store just down the street from the house. Along the way we found a "nature preserve" with a walking path. The only "nature" we found in the over grown bushes were lizzards which you could find in the driveway. This is just before we left for our walk... one of my favorites of the week.

And this picture is how Carly looked when I checked to see if she fell asleep halfway through our walk.

We had an amazing week. Justin is very blessed to have such great friends from his childhood and their families are some of my favorite people. Adam and Katy will probably remember how Stephen didn't nap, eat or sleep at night all week long. Frank and Allison will probably wish they lived near the beach because their children could literally swim all day and still stay up past 10 o'clock. Proof that this did happen.

Justin and I will probably regret taking the swimmies/floaties off Brooks' arms as he now loves to run and jump in the pool in the one spot where we are *not* waiting for him. We've already started talking about our next families vacation for 2013.

And this is how our kiddos looked 20 minutes after we started heading home on our 8 hour car ride.