Life's a Beach

Better late than never right?

Sure, we've been back from the beach a week but I don't feel like my vacation has started yet, maybe this week.
We ended our "tour de southeast" with a week long stay at the Destin Recreation Center. This trip was NOT spontaneous. I actually planned this trip in early December and made the reservations on December 28th with SNOW covering the ground in NC.
I wanted to stay in a 3bdrm Cabin and there are only 3 of them. I asked what day and time I needed to call to secure one of them and they told me the exact day. This girl gets what she wants...if she plans ahead! You just can't beat a 3 bedroom HOUSE overlooking the bay for 120 a night in June/July. This was our 6th stay at the resort and we just love it there. Our own pool, pier and bay access in a gated community of quality citizens! Ok, maybe they are not high class but they are decent people since they are military families.
They have done significant renovations since we started vacationing here. Flat screen TV's, showers and backsplashes are just a few of the much improved facilities! The beach is a 3 mile drive but it is also military ID card holder only so it is NEVER crowded. There's a lot to be said about a non crowded beach the week of July 4th! It may have been the only thing not crowded that week.
THIS:


is what we feasted on the first night at the beach. I'm convinced that nobody in Destin ate as good as we did that night! Believe it or not, nobody loved the crawfish more than THIS boy! That is him doing it cajun style sucking the heads. I guess he's living up to his last name.

In the middle of our meal, Jackson decided we needed to "cheers" our crawfish before we continued. I'll drink, er pinch, to that!

This is monumental. This may have been the first time since Disney World in Oct 09 that ALL of the whole fam-damily has been together. Our holidays were a little crazy, our Sept. Atlanta trip was off a little so for the first time in almost 2 years, let me introduce you to the entire Smith-deFoor-Mooring families! I wouldn't say it's a world class photo, probably not even framable in my book. You'd think with mom being a photographer, we could do better than this but we all know too well that we were pretty dang lucky to get one this good. The men are as hard to photograph as the children and put them all together, that's why there is NO disney photo to prove that we were all together then. You'll just have to trust me.

Jason and I worked together to build Jackson a sand castle. He was supposed to be helping. He got stuck in the ocean, having fun in the waves. But as you can see, Lincoln is doing a fine job bossing us around. Don't worry, we're kinda used to Linc bossing us around. It's usually in the form of a squeal of displeasure. Hey, whatever works for him.

One fine afternoon right before time for us to go make the boys beach pictures, their sweet daddy heard the icecream truck and went out to get them overpriced frozen treats. What little kid (or daddy) can resist the ice cream truck! He came back in with a homerun in the form of icecream. He got Lincoln a "midaman" popcicle. That's translated as spiderman for those that don't speak two year old. He also got Jackson a batman pop. Yeah, dad, good job, you win on this one. Well, Lincoln enjoyed his pop, you could see it all over his face. No really, you could see the stain of popcicle resembling a goatee on Lincoln's chin. I realize that one day the boys may develop facial hair but I'm not ready for their 2 year old portraits to reflect it. I used eye makeup remover, baby wipes and good ole mama spit and still didn't completely succeed in removing midaman from his chin. Thank goodness for photoshop or some of you would be asking if Lincoln is maturing a little too quickly!


Yeah, sure, it looks like we breezed through this photo shoot and made these as they posed this way and that way.

Well, take my word for it, that was NOT the case. They were posed, bribed and threatened in the very same sentence. An entire box of tic tacs was in Lincoln's mouth at one time and he was still asking for more. He didn't like the sand on his hands and Jackson was in a permanent state of CHEESE which doesn't suit him well. It was an hour of pure torture for all of those involved, including those behind the camera. But wasn't it worth seeing those cute faces of my 2 and 5 year olds at the beach in perfectly natural fashion?
Yeah, sure, natural.

They just happened to be so nicely playing together on the piece of drift wood.
Not.
Right after this Jackson pulled Lincoln down and proceeded to walk on it himself.





No matter what, they are sweet boys and I love them and their anti-picture making selves. That's the great thing about being the mommy. I win!

usually.