Wyatt Reid Jeans: Family Vacation 2012 {Surfside Beach, TX}

We took our first real Family Vacation this year and it was so much fun. I can't wait for the next one! Aunt Sarah and Uncle Garrett got to come with us and the Mikulas Family (Mackenzie, Jonathan, Taylor (7), Avery (1), and Aidan (3). There were 7 kids and 4 adults but it went better than I could have expected. The kids had tons of fun together. Everyone got along. And the house was a perfect size. Wyatt called the beach house "our new house." It had 2 bedrooms, a nice sized living room, and a kitchen with an island, plus a big loft area upstairs with bunk beds, a day bed, and a queen bed. We were super close to the beach. All we had to do was walk downstairs (run for our lives away from the killer mosquitoes that had come in from all the rain the week prior) and walk down to the beach (and once we got to the beach the mosquitoes were gone). We stayed for a week.

The day after we got home I made a shutterfly scrapbook because I didn't want to leave anything out, there were so many pictures, and I didn't have time to do a fancy scrapbook with the program I have on my computer. With that said, I wanted to post pictures here for our family and friends to see what we did, but the pictures are out of order and I selected a few just to make it easier.

On or drive to the beach all the kids did awesome! Wyatt played on the ipad and watched movies and Kenley slept, ate, and hung out. Garrett and Sarah played on their phones. Chris drove and I slept and played on facebook, of course. We stopped at Bucees to eat and take in the Bucees experience because we had never been and I always hear about it.

As soon as we got to the beach we unpacked and got our suits on and headed out to the beach. We didn't waste any time getting to the water. After playing we went to IHOP and then made a WalMart stop to get all the cold food we needed.

The rest of the week was spent swimming, boogie boarding, trying to wake board, building sand castles and holes, catching anything we could find to catch, saving other peoples' lives by getting jellyfish out of the water ;), watching fireworks, cooking meals (it takes a lot of time to cook and feed that many people!), trying to get kids to "rest", fishing, crabbing, playing games (we had serious Phase 10 games going on after the kids were in bed; this family doesn't mess around when it comes to playing games), perfecting our assembly line of getting babies and preschoolers back from the beach and showered, praying there weren't any ER trips needed because Wyatt and Aidan would not stop play wrestling and every kids insisted on jumping from the top bunk, and laughing lots and lots.

We went to Galveston, which was about 40 minutes away one evening. We had dinner at The Spot, which was really good and had AMAZING desserts (it was vacation!). Then rode the ferry twice to see dolphins swimming in the ocean. Then went to the Rainforest Cafe's River Adventure Ride, which was a ride for all ages and you sit in a round boat and go along a little river and look at the rainforest theme with fake animals and lots of noises. Wyatt hung on tight to me and about the time we got to the gorillas he had had enough. Poor guy. Kenley wasn't phased at all.

Another day we went to the Sea Center aquarium and hatchery and it was the neatest place. We got a tour and saw how they conserve, hatch, and release fish. EVERYONE was so interested in this place and our free little field trip turned out to be so worth it.

Okay, that's my quick summary because I know what everyone is looking for are the pictures. Here they are...

Crabbing