Alys: The Beach

Saturday was a beautiful day at the beach, although we were anticipating Irma to start rolling in that afternoon/ night. It was hot and they didn’t have chair/ umbrella service, but the breeze was nice and water was clear. HG found an eight year old friend on the beach to play with, so that was an unexpected surprise. Cressey still wasn’t a fan of the beach, though HG was able to convince her to take a few steps on it. Later that night, HG, John, and I went to dinner at La Crema and visited with our SAA friends at their house after dinner.

Snacks make everything better.

Dinner at La Crema

By the time we got home on Saturday night, the wind was picking up. It rained pretty hard over night, and the wind howled. When we woke up on Sunday morning, there was a lot of wind and a decent amount of rain, but by lunch, it was just a normal overcast, drippy day. We met our SAA friends at an arcade and then went to La Cocina (with Cressey in tow) that night (which was obviously short lived).

Killing time during the “hurricane”

Time to get outta the house, braving the “storm”

Lunch at George’s

Arcade fun

Some of the SAA daddies did this thing- can you believe it?!

Cressey’s first time on a bike- huge hit! She talked the whole time and rubbed John’s back.

We tried to recreate this memory from Alys Beach last year. Didn’t go quite like I had planned.

Dinner at La Cocina

I tried desperately to get Cress to cooperate with me to take a pic with this stunning sunset in the background, but this is the best I got.

Dancing the night away with Elaina

On Monday, our last day, we wanted to spend as much time as possible at the beach, but without beach chair service and due to the HOT temps, we headed to the pool pretty quickly. Everyone was happier there that day, especially Cressey. We attempted some family pics that night, although Cressey wasn’t happy a) because of the sand, b) without her paci, and c) without being in my arms with HG an arms length away. That night, John and I met our SAA friends for an adults only date night at the Pearl for drinks and Edward’s for dinner.

Life is hard

This sums up our attempt at family beach pics.

Dinner at Edward’s

Ready for the long trip home on Tuesday morning

Another passenger accidentally picked up John’s luggage, so we had to spend more time in baggage claim than expected. HG strolled Cressey in circles until her eyelids got heavy and then rubbed her legs and sang to her until she fell asleep. I can’t even get over how great of a big sister she is.

Alys Beach 2017: Getting There

We haven’t taken a family vacation since the NYC experience/ disaster in April and I had had enough of all my friends’ beach pics on social media, so we decided to try traveling with Cressey again and take our annual trip to Alys Beach for fall break. We flew since she doesn’t tolerate cars well.

She did decently other than the 10 minutes on each flight where she was required to sit in her seat and be still. We did buy her her own seat this time, and the space was really nice to have. Her ears don’t seem to bother her, and she pushed through naptime as best as we could have expected. We didn’t get any nasty comments this time, and we were blessed with some really nice seatmates. (She fell asleep the minute she got into her car seat on both trips.)

We really hit the easy button this trip. I had groceries delivered within an hour of when we got there, I had baby gear delivered to the house and it was already set up when we arrived, and we had a babysitter set up for three different times throughout our trip. There was only one small problem- Hurricane Irma. It threatened to uproot our whole trip, but we decided to just push through and were glad we did. It was just a lot of rain and wind overnight and a dreary day on Sunday. Not bad!

Helen Grace and I are beach people. We need to recharge and refuel with sand, the breeze, and the ocean. It seems Cressey did NOT receive the same genes…or maybe she just needs more time. She REFUSED to put her feet on the sand. Big disaster. There’s always next time.

Here’s the start of our adventure…

In the sky club…after John raced home to recover HG’s backpack sitting by the back door.

What a great big sister. She is SUCH a big help.

Peep pie with daddy a row ahead of us

This was adorable in the one minute while it lasted. My hopes were dashed.

This was a majority of our flights as I tried to tell her to sit in her seat.

ATL layover

Look at this little soldier! She’s a professional traveler.

Asleep as soon as she hit the car seat

Ahhhhhh, the real crib was a hit. She wanted to try it out immediately.

HG had to hit the beach asap.

Found a new friend!

Cressey’s first beach experience in 2017

NOT A FAN