Wrapping Up Our Time on the Beach

 

 As I sit listening to the waves crash on the beach nearby and the wind whip through the house, I can’t believe we have been so fortunate to have spent 6 months living on the beach.  We have experienced such wonderful weather throughout our time here.  Would you believe that now, in January, we are still wearing bathing suits and getting the water?  It is difficult for me to fathom life not on the water.  It’s amazing how quickly you adjust to new surroundings and new norms.  This is both a comforting thought as we getting ready to embark on our international trip, and a sad thought of leaving behind what we have grown to love. 

 To catch you up on our life as of late, we continue to spend everyday frequenting the beach. Amelie and Liam ride their bikes down to a walkway that leads directly to the beach.  Amelie calls it a bridge. She loves riding down the long slope gaining speed the whole way down.  Someone built a ginormous hole nearby so we spend a good amount of time rolling, sliding, jumping, and hiding in the hole. We also take walks along the water pointing out the jellyfish and sliding down the little cliffs that form. We talk to the fisherman about their catches while Liam tries to get into the bucket with the caught fish. We have been building “rivers” that join and connect to the ocean. I am going to have to be creative in how I entertain the kiddos again once we leave here!

Liam point out a jellyfish.

Playing in the "river" we created.

Liam holding a ghost shrimp.  He likes to help Bobby by place them in the bait bucket.

-->

Amelie jumping off one of the cliffs.

During the winter months, the arrival of snowbirds has occurred.  We have loved our new friends, and have actually made quite a few!  Bobby has enjoyed fishing near Roy, Harold, Mark, and more.  The kids love Jake and Ginger (dogs) and their owners who are from Canada and Minnesota.  We love hearing how beautiful our kids are whether we are on the beach or in the grocery store.  We always slow down to carry on a conversation about the kids.  I love the constant reminder about how fun this time in our lives is.  We hear all about stories of their grown kids and their current grandchildren.  It’s crazy to think that one day we will be the ones telling our memories of the little ones.  There are hard days of dealing with attitudes and knowing how to discipline, but in it all we are constantly reminded of how the days go by fast and how important it is to treasure each stage of development.  We also love the questions about how we are able live on the beach.  You do not see anyone our age on the beach right now!  We love sharing our plans of adventure and hearing their thoughts about it.  Most encourage us that our plans are amazing and they are so happy for us to have this ability to travel with our young children.  They remind us how fortunate we are. 

In closing, I thought I would share a funny story.  The other day while we were on the beach, Bobby ran back to the house to get a board for one of his friends to sit on while putting me in charge of watching the fishing pole and the kids.  This wasn’t a big deal as we had been out for hours and the fish were not biting.  I turned to talk to some people walking by admiring the kids and then looked back to the fishing pole.  To my dismay, the pole was gone and the holder was lying in the sand.  I immediately ran into the icy water to try to find the pole but I couldn’t find it.  Mark and Roy saw me floundering around and immediately ran into the ocean as well.  Bobby comes running back onto the beach to find us in the ocean and no pole and started the hunt as well.  The water was crystal clear but there was no sign of the pole.  A beach cleanup crewmember stopped and stood by Liam to make sure he didn’t run into the ocean after us.  The whole scene was a sight and was talked about for days afterward.  Bobby and I have laughed on and off about the lost pole and the fish that got a way.  He was more upset about losing a giant fish and I was upset about the pole (who he had a buyer lined up for that evening!).  The men on the beach have laughed a number of times about it too.  We will miss our new friends.  We are being strongly encouraged to make it back here in 2014 to our Gulf Shores family.

~Kelly

Gulf Shores Christmas

Gulf Shores has had quite a few family friendly Christmas activities so far this month.  We have had fun learning the ways of a Gulf-shorian in December.  As you can see below, I had a hard time narrowing down the number of pictures to include.

Boat Parade down the Canal

Large boats, small boats, pirate boats, shrimping boats...all types of boats covered with lights!  Some had Santa, Rudolf, Angels, Christmas trees. Some shot off cannons, had people yelling "Merry Christmas", or blared music. All were beautiful. 

While we sat on the bank of the canal eating our picnic dinner of PB & J's, we marveled at the sights and sounds. 

 Angel Christmas Breakfast at Gulf Shores United Methodist

The church associated with Amelie's preschool held an Angel Christmas breakfast.  Angels served tiny angel pancakes covered with powdered sugar and candy, little sausage links, and canned fruit (very health conscious). We sang some Christmas carols and listened to an angel story.  As you can see from Amelie's sugar crazed look, she had a blast! After the program, she (and her friend Claire seen in the white dress) ran laps around the fellowship hall.

Picture with the angels.

 Gulf Shores Christmas Parade

Amelie jumped up and down waving at everyone float that passed by once she realized there was candy involved.

Before and after the parade there were other activities set up for us to do.  Amelie's favorite was the Jump House and Slide.  We also decorated cookies, had a picture with Santa, saw stable animals including a 2000 lb camel, and more.

Liam had a great view (and vantage point over dad)!  The parade was at the same time as the UGA vs AL SEC Championship game.  Bobby was wearing his GEORGIA t-shirt and received lots of comments throughout the evening.  There was a tent set up for us to be able to watch the game.  Other than being totally out numbered, this reminded me of one of our experiences watching the GA/FL game outside the stadium in 2002. It was a test of our character to be around so many AL fans after the tough game. ;)

Santa came in on the fire truck seen in the background.  The other characters came up and Amelie just ran close to get a good look.  Santa held out his arms and Amelie jumped into them!  Fun picture!  Later she was able to sit on Santa's lap.  She loved the experience of being near Santa, Liam on the other hand did not.

Gulf Shores City Open House (City Hall, Museum, Library, etc)

The City of Gulf Shores has an open house in which you can walk around town enjoying Christmas treats and doing fun activities like writing letters to Santa and making ornaments.  Liam does not like characters in costumes! Santa came on a blaring fire truck which was the high light of the evening.

Fun in the Sun at the Beach....in DECEMBER!!!!

The weather for the last weekish has been in the 70s and sunny!  We have reverted back to spending our mornings, afternoons to sunset at the beach.  We are trying to soak in as many rays as possible!

Love the sunsets!

Liam is walking (and running) so good in the sand.  We have had more beach added so there have been bulldozers around.  He loves finding tire tracks and walking in them. I love this shirt too! 

Favorite things: building mounds to stomp in and digging holes to climb in and out of.

It's been so warm that we put on bathing suits and played in the water.  Liam follows after his big sister, running in and out of the ocean unafraid of the waves.

This is SO much fun!

Bobby made a contraption to slurp up ghost shrimp.  Ghost shrimp are the perfect bait because all fish love them AND it's free!

Sunset on the pier.

Bobby has caught a lot of really good fish recently.  Pictured here are his first red fish.

 Can you tell that we are loving beach life?  However, we are counting down the days until we head back to Georgia to visit family and friends.  Amelie has started talking about not wanting to leave Gulf Shores.  We are trying to encourage her that more adventure and fun things await us in the next city, but we understand that the unknown can be daunting.  We also know that these past few months have been our own little paradise.  Gulf Shores has definitely grown on us...or maybe it is more about the beach and less about the city....either way we are determined not to be away from the beach for too long!
We are learning that we can make fun family memories and traditions that will just look a little different from city to city.  What fun things have you been doing this month?  Any traditions that you would like to share?  We'd love to hear!! ;)

~Kelly

Almost into a daily rhythm

Well, we've been here for about two weeks, and we've almost settled in to our daily rhythm.  Right now our pattern consists of a combination of the following: wake up, eat, beach, pool, eat, sleep, beach, pool, read, park, beach, eat, beach, pier/dock, beach, beach, beach, beach...  Interject some time for Kelly and I to do work on our virtual school jobs (which includes contacting kids and parents, holding chats, grading, and so forth) and you have a pretty good idea of what we do everyday.  So far we aren't tired of the beach, so this pattern suits us well.

Liam's routine on the beach is to pick up something new, put it in his mouth, eat all the sand on it, and then move on.  It looks like this stick is the next victim.

In every single photo of Amelie, she is running, jumping, or moving.  She is non-stop action, mainly because she loves the beach and everything a three-year old can do on one.

We do miss certain parts of Athens already.  If I had to sum up Gulf Shores in one phrase, it would be "tourist (redneck) trap".  Therefore, it is almost devoid of any type of identity or culture of it's own, unless you call condo-on-condo, fried seafood, and souvenir shops as identity.  The food culture, the coffee culture, the beer culture, the music culture, the townie culture, none of these things exist here.   I just assumed that everywhere was like Athens in that these cultural elements would be recreated in their own local fashion.  This includes Athens Church, too.  The lone church we've visited just didn't have passion for excellence that Athens Church has, and it's own parishioners informed me it doesn't get much better in the area.  I guess because we've been in Athens so long that I just took it for granted.  And this is more than an observation.  I've talked up the locals, looking for decent breakfast places, bakeries, locally roasted coffee, anything, and they either look at me like I'm an idiot or agree that I'm going to have to get out of Gulf Shores for anything like that.  Luckily, the rest of the Gulf is ripe with history and culture, and we are just a short ride from towns like Fairhope, AL and longer rides to places like New Orleans.  Also, I think that some of these places might exist in Gulf Shores, but I might have to just look extra hard for them.

 Fried oyster sandwich from Sea 'n Suds. Just about everything was fried, but low prices (for the area) made up for fairly generic menu.

Beignets from Cafe Beignet.  This is definitely regional food and was made famous by Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans.  This place was the perfect example of a breakfast place that would be worth revisiting if they had any atmosphere at all (or even coffee that was good).

We've had a lot of transition.  Up ending our lives, selling everything, changing jobs, moving, making new friends...the list goes on.  But it's fun, it's exciting, it's energizing.  We are loving being on a schedule that looks different everyday, in a place that is new, with a new setting and environment just a few months over the horizon.  There is no monotony or boredom except for that which we choose to create or allow to exist.  We feel like we are starting a chapter in our story that is exciting, that people will want to read, that our kids will want to tell.  Not that we were unhappy or tired of the previous chapters.  We loved writing them as well.  They made us who we are and got us where we are.  However, now the story has taken a turn that is more in line with our personalities, and we are excited to be a part of whatever happens next.