Beach Vacation: Day 5

**In case anyone noticed and was wondering why these vacation posts just abruptly stopped, the reason is that we came home yesterday. On Wednesday night, we were busy enjoying our last night and packing, and then last night I was tired and just went to bed after we made it home. But I have to finished them out day by day or it would drive me crazy ;) So, I'll just pick up where I left off!**

Tuesday was Day 5 of our vacation, and it was outlet mall day! We had planned to go to the outlet mall in Destin on Tuesday all along, and it ended up working out perfectly since I had gotten really burned the day before. I didn't want to be in the sun a lot the day after getting burned, so it was off to the mall! :)

I was taking Jude to the mall with me so that David and Aubrey could go play at the beach and have fun and stay as long as they wanted. So, that morning, I put Jude down for his nap, and Laken stayed at the condo with him while Rebekkah, Carver, and I walked around Rosemary and went in all the little shops around there. We went back to the condo and I fed Jude, and then Rebekkah, Laken, Jude, and I hit the road! I always love going to the outlet mall and making a day of shopping! We ate lunch at Panera first and then shopped till we dropped! Jude did great in his stroller and only got fussy towards the end when we he was tired. He fell asleep on the way home, thankfully.

Meanwhile, David and Aubrey were having a great time at the beach. David took the camera with him since pictures of Aubrey playing on the beach are much more interesting than pictures of me shopping. Haha!David took Aubrey back to the condo in time for a nap that afternoon, and we got back from shopping late afternoon. We all got ready after that because we were planning on taking pictures at the beach that evening. I had HIGH hopes of getting some cute pictures of the kids on the beach at sunset. I'll just let you guess how that went. Actually, I'll do better than that. I'll show you exactly how that went: Jude is eating sand....

.....Aubrey won't sit still......... so I decide to intervene.Things still aren't going as planned, so we take a little break, and Aubrey proceeds to go into the ocean and get herself soaked. Nevertheless, we press on and try again. I finally reign myself to the fact that it just isn't happening. Tears ensue. (I managed to hold mine in somehow.) We do get a couple of adorable pictures of Jude since he is slightly more cooperative than Aubrey ;) He does have a mouth full of sand in these pictures, mind you. At least the sky and the ocean were beautiful during all of this madness! :)I didn't get a single cute picture of Aubrey and Jude together. I was SO disappointed! We did get a couple of decent ones with all four of us, but I'll wait to post those just in case they might make an appearance as gifts (Sunday IS Mother's Day, afterall...... ;).

We did get some cute pictures of the Arants, too :) (Although I think Carver was about as thrilled to be having his picture made as Aubrey was.)And we got some other miscellaneous cute ones, so it wasn't a completely wasted endeavour!

After all the picture taking madness, it was well past dinner time! We were able to eat at The Red Bar, and there was no wait! We were excited, and it was SO good!! We wanted dessert after dinner (dessert was a nightly thing while on vacation -- I'm going to need to hit the gym big time next week!), so we drove to Seaside to get gelatto. Sadly, all the ice cream/gelatto places were closed :( We decided to just go back to the condo and bake cookies instead, and they were pretty darn tasty! ;) We finished off the night reading/blogging/watching TV, and that was the end of another super fun vacation day! :)