Gulf Shores (Days 1 and 2)

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Day 1 (and most of day 2) of our Gulf Shores trip was spent en route to Gulf Shores, on our first road trip!

We left Thursday afternoon at 4:00 right after Grayden got off the bus.

I have this weird obsession over using up the contents of the refrigerator and leaving on vacation with an empty and clean refrigerator. I'm not sure why, but seeing it so empty brings me so much satisfaction! lol

Here's the two littles running off some energy while we waited for Grayden to get home and we'd spend the next 15+ hours in the van!

On our way!

The driver

The passenger, aka crowd control

I had a whole tub of things for the kids to stay occupied, iPads, mobigo, crayons, books, movies, stickers, window clings, and clipboards full of several fun road trip activities I found here

I kept Jovie awake all day Thursday, so she was zonked in the first 20 minutes, and stayed asleep almost until we made our first stop for dinner, at Chick-fil-a in South Bend, IN.

Baby Posey was lucky enough to join us on our trip too ;)

Despite the hard rain, and Sadler asking how much longer after the first 30 minutes and every 10 minutes after that, lol, the drive went pretty well and the kids all got some sleep.

We drove until about 12:30am, and then stopped to sleep at a dumpy Days Inn in White House, TN. There wasn't much vacancy available, but it was better than a stable ;)

I didn't get a picture, but I really don't need to preserve that visual!

We woke up around 5:30am, grabbed a continental breakfast and hit the road again.

Friday was a LONG day, the excitement of our first road trip had worn off, and we were all ready to be out of the van.

We made stops for lunch at Hardee's, and also for donuts, and made it to our condo at 2:30 pm (which was 3:30 Michigan time, almost 24 hours after we left)

We booked a condo unit through vrbo.com at Sanibel

Here is our view from our balcony on the 15th floor

Our condo unit #1503

Master bedroom, complete with full bathroom

The kids' room also with their own full bathroom

The living room

dining area

kitchen

It also has another half bath and laundry. Such a nice set-up!

Once we settled in for a bit and unpacked, we headed to Walmart to stock up on some groceries for the week.

We came back to the condo to eat a quick dinner (gotta love rotisserie chicken!) and then the kids were anxious to get in the pool, even though it was raining and cold we agreed they had waited long enough!

We were all tired from a long couple of days traveling, and were so ready to call it a night, even though the kids didn't go to bed quite as early as we were hoping :)

Stay tuned for more of our trip! The best is yet to come!