First Beach Day of 2025!

OK first, we picked up a very early Walmart grocery pickup order, like right after 7am. Then we saw a yard sale in our neighborhood, and just had to pop by to see what we could see. We got a few cute books, and a few cute baskets. Addison in particular was obsessed with her tiny basket, and I was obsessed with watching her carry it around in her princess dress, like a real-life little princess.

Then we had a little snack at home, and packed up the car with all of our beach toys and towels and things, and hit the road. We planned to go down to St. George Island, so we drove through Crawfordville, and also tried out a new coffee truck, called Wild Ox. They actually have their own little drive-thru set-up, and this Samoa latte with coconut, caramel & mocha was delicious.

We made way too many more stops on the way down (for potty breaks, once at a Dollar General when we realized we forgot to pack Addison a t-shirt for after the beach, since she was just wearing her bathing suit in the car; turns out, Dollar General didn’t sell kids clothes like I thought… and for who knows what else…) but we finally made it out onto the beautiful beach at St. George Island!

The sky was cloudless, the weather was perfect, the water felt amazing – it was honestly the perfect beach day! I saw a thing a couple days ago that said something like, “Your Saturdays are their childhood,” and that stuck in my head and played on a loop all day, watching them play in the sand and swim in the sea, laughing and smiling and having the best time. And since that was in my head, we stayed way longer than planned, just letting them make the most of it.

Oh yeah, one or three of our stops was trying to find one of the side-of-the-road boiled peanut sellers that would take Venmo or CashApp or something, and then when we finally actually got cash at that Dollar General, we finally got my favorite beach snack. Because is it really a beach day if you don’t get a giant cup of boiled peanuts from a man on the side of the road with a giant, steaming steel drum?!

We hadn’t planned to stay on the island so late, but not only did I forget the sub rolls to go with our turkey & cheese to make sammies for lunch (so we just ate all the snacks), but since we did stay on the beach playing so long, we decided to make a whole thing out of it and eat at the Blue Parrot for an early-ish dinner. We all ordered these delicious frozen smoothie drinks to help cool us off, and they were so good. I got a coconut/mint/lime one which was amazing, Jeff had a strawberry & coconut one, and the girls shared a mango one.

And these shrimp tacos with lemon aioli sauce were soooo good! Emerson ordered popcorn shrimp, and as she reclined across the table, she was going on and on, saying how perfect the day was, and how much she loved her food, and she was just so happy and content, and it warmed my heart so much.

Love these pink, rosy-cheeked, sun-kissed precious girls of mine! (And we ended up buying both girls a cute St. George Island t-shirt from one of those kitschy beach shops.)

And of course, my sleepy exhausted girls fell asleep in the car for most of our car ride back home. And I might or might not have done the same thing…

By the time we got home, unloaded the car, and got bathed/showered and ready for bed, it was much later than our usual bedtime, and the girls were over-tired, so it took a little bit to get them settled back down and actually asleep. Gonna grab a little snack, since dinner feels like forever ago, and then crash into bed after a fun, exhausting day!