Thomas' dads family has this great tradition of going on a trip together each year. Right before I moved to Mississippi they went to Disney World for 3 days. In March 2014, the Gregory family decided to do a long weekend on the Florida coast for Easter weekend and as a girlfriend, I got to come!
Thomas' dad is remarried to Susan, who also has a son and daughter. So that makes for four children in all, and now we are all married. During this trip, Durden and Molly were engaged and Thomas and I had been dating for less than a year.
Anna, Thomas' sister, Thomas and I left after work one day for the 7 hour drive to Seagrove Florida and arrived just after midnight. Terrence, Anna's husband, had to work that weekend. :( We arrived at the beautiful four bedroom condo (Thomas, Anna and I shared a room) that was the second floor of a vaulted building.
As you see, we were right on the beach. This was my first time to the gulf coast and I was very surprised by a few things:
1. White sand! In Oregon we have tan or grey sand.
2. And BLUE and CLEAR water?!
3. The water was warm!!! OMG! Crazy! And it was March! In Oregon you have to wait 5 minutes until your skin turns red and then you are numb enough so you can stay in the water.
4. The water didn't really move. Because it was a gulf, there was very little/no tide. I am used to the water lapping up significantly every 15 seconds and then depending on the moon being at a very difference place every 12 hours or so.
5. There were no tide pools or rocks or cliffs to climb on explore. :(
Pictured left to right: Durden, Molly, Elizabeth, Barret, Me, Thomas, Susan, Tommy, Anna.
(I stole this picture from Facebook so sorry about the bummer quality)
We spent our first day out on the beach. There were some very athletic families that came down from the Midwest that brought the whole volley ball set up.
They let us play a game by ourselves when they were taking a break.
Of course we didn't have near as much professionalism as they did but man did we laugh at how awful we were. That was probably my favorite thing we did the entire trip.
The next day we went to the nearby towns. Seaside is super cute and is where the movie "The Truman Show" was filmed. Alys was super manicured and all the buildings were white stucco and followed a certain code. It felt like we were in Greece. And I think I remember Rosemary beach being my favorite.
Other things we did were went out to dinner, went to the outlet malls
and I finally bought my first pair of Birkenstocks and have been in love with them ever since!
(notice how my toenail color matches the purple in the shells!)
Anna, Thomas and I went on the Alys Beach Nature Trail which help fuel up my nature deficit.
And other fun things spotted in Alys.
Saturday night we played Cards Against Humanity with the whole family.
It was hilarious but we soon realized it was a poor choice of a game to play with your parents!
One night we went to dinner with Kendall who lives in Grayton Beach but works in Ayls as their landscaper. And yes I took a picture of my salad with green goddess dressing, blue cheese and bacon. It was amazing and made me miss trying out new restaurants.
And of course it was Easter weekend and we were at the beach so we all decided to go to sunrise service and guess who was leading the music?!
Steven Curtis Chapman! I was the only one of the group who knew he was famous.
Elizabeth loves taking pictures with famous people so thankfully she documented it!
I loved Easter weekend with my boyfriends family that is now OUR family.
I cannot wait for our next Gregory family vacation!
