Coloring and playing on the beach and eating and eating and eating!
Today was our last full day in Gulf Shores. We will be heading home early tomorrow afternoon. We’re sad to be leaving, but we’re happy that we’ll be able to see Remi and Bitsy again!
We had a lazy day. We did a lot of coloring in the morning and spent the rest of the day at the beach and in the Saltwater Pool. We ate as much of our leftover food as we could, all day long, because we can’t take it with us. We shopped and shopped until we had everything we needed and then we had too much of it all. That’s vacation.
Most of the family got an early start at the beach, but Beanie and I stayed behind a while to get caught up on our coloring. There was lots and lots of white paper left to be covered with red and blue and pink and green and all of the other beautiful colors and we did our best to do that. In the end there was still some white paper showing through, but we created a large volume of colorful artwork.
Beanie’s naked attempt to bait me into declaring her artwork superior to Caelynn’s was my favorite part of our art sessions. She started subtly (for Beanie) and turned up the gas as I’d resist. She got all the way to “do you like mine better than CaeCae’s?” Right to the heart of the matter.
“Yours are the best representation of your style for sure!” sounded enough like “yes” to finally knock her off of the subject.
For dinner we ate as much as we could. There was spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, pork tenderloin, and every type of fruit, potato chip, and beverage you can imagine.
I consumed without conscience. I won’t have another opportunity to eat like this for a while. I’m happy that I was able to keep up my normal gym schedule all the way through vacation. I spent a couple hours at Anytime Fitness in Foley every couple days. It was well situated as a jumping off point to whatever I had planned later in the day.
Sometimes there’s no better way to celebrate discretion than with massive indiscretion that negates it.
In the evening we went for another long walk down the beach. Danny found a dead jellyfish on the shore. We took turns poking it with a stick and it felt like plastic. We collected seashells with holes in them for the girls to make into jewelry. They gave me an ankle bracelet that has a full-sized clam shell on it. It’s as beautiful as it is practical.
It’s sad to see our vacation end, but we’re only beginning the busy summer season and before we know it, it’ll be vacation time again.
I’m not so much looking forward to all of the travel we’ll be doing tomorrow, but I can’t wait for Emmy’s dance recital on Saturday!
It’s the people who matter, not the place.