We had a great time in Chicago last summer, but this year we wanted to do something different. No big city. No exciting aquariums or museums. Just us. And a beach. And it all started with a trip to the emergency room!
On Saturday morning, as we were packing the last of our stuff into the car, I pushed the back door open to put the cooler on the floor. I had no idea that Sarah was standing at the open front door with her fingers along the doorframe! Needless to say, I pinched her fingers between the door and the door frame, and in no time she and I were both crying as Tom drove us to Children's Mercy. It turns out that her fingers were not broken, but Sarah got to have some x-rays and get her fingers wrapped in a splint for the first 24 hours of our trip...
Sarah did great on the car ride to and from Gulf Shores, which was no easy feat considering it was about 16 hours of driving...with her left hand heavily bandaged. We broke the drive up over two days, stopping in Memphis on our way down and again on the way back home, but still - that's a long trip for a 2-year-old!
We ran into some rain between Memphis and Gulf Shores, but it had pretty much stopped by the time we reached the cottage we had rented along Mobile Bay. This little house was a perfect home away from home - and it had lots of charm, too! We loved having our own dock overlooking what Sarah called "the river," and the two little bedrooms worked out just perfectly for us. Look at how cute this place was...
After unloading our stuff and exploring for a while, we decided to find some dinner. We drove back into town, put in our names at The Shrimp Basket, and let Sarah walk over to see the giant purple octopus at the souvenir shop across the parking lot while we waited for a table to open up!
Tom and I had a delicious dinner of fried shrimp on the restaurant's porch, but Sarah was too busy watching other kids feed their French fries to the sea gulls to eat much of anything! It was pretty late by the time we finished eating, but I wanted to let Sarah at least see the ocean before we went to bed. We had no idea how she would react to the sand or to the water, but it turns out that she loved them both. Here are the pictures of Sarah's first trip to the beach:
When it got too dark to see the sand, we headed back to the cabin for the night. Sarah went right to sleep, and Mom and Dad weren't too far behind!
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