Our Life: August 2009

Monday, August 17, 2009

Our summer vacation 2009

View from our condo in Orange Beach, AL

For vacation this year, Brad, Jason, Alec and I went to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We shared a condo with Brad's sister Tami, her husband Shawn, their boys Ryne and Seth and Brad's parents. Here are some highlights of the trip.

We flew into New Orleans on Sunday 8/9
We rented a car and drove to the French Quarter
We ate beignets at Cafe DuMonde. Jason had heard of them on the food channel and really wanted to go there.
It was pouring rain in New Orleans so we did not stay long and headed toward Alabama (after we returned to the airport to retrieve Jason's cell phone he left on the plane)
There are still many abandoned buildings that no one ever returned to after Hurricane Katrina
We drove to Gulf Port, Mississippi and spent the night at a Quality Inn.
On Monday we drove on to Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama - stopping at Lambert's Cafe - the home of 'throwed rolls' on the way.
We were the first to reach the condo so we checked on in.
The condo was wonderful. 7th floor - 2500 square feet - 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths - awesome view
The rest of the week consisted of lots of swimming (in the ocean as well as the lazy river and pools), walks on the beach, reading, relaxing and many trips to the grocery store and souvenir shops
Jason and Ryne were both stung by jellyfish but recovered quickly
Seth caught a blue crab with a fishing net
Two laptops, our Ipods and a big screen TV kept us in touch with the world and gave us our electronic and Facebook fix
Tami and I took the 4 boys to Pensacola, FL on Thursday. We visited Big Lagoon State Park and Pensacola Beach and the boys all parasailed.
Shawn did all the cooking (with some help from Maxine and Charles). It was wonderful to have someone else cook for a change :) and to have the coffee already made when I got up in the mornings.
Our five night stay ended much too quickly and on Saturday we checked out and headed back to New Orleans for our flight home.