May 17 & 18 - Orange Beach 2013

We finally made it to the beach after two days of travel!  WooHoo!  Technically our "Day 1" of vacation was spent in the car on the way to Orange Beach, but I'll blog about those anyway.

We left our house Friday morning.  

 Annabel had these stickers ALL over her and the car, but I wasn't complaining.  They kept her happy.

We stopped for lunch in Little Rock at a CFA for some playtime to stretch our legs.  Annabel decided it was the day she was finally going to go down the slide.  She loved it!

We made it to Pearl, Mississippi around dinner time Friday.  We let the girls jump on the bed a few minutes before going out to dinner.

We stayed at a hotel in the parking lot of a Bass Pro, so we walked over there after dinner to run around and look at the fish.

Funny story!  I've recently become a huge Duck Dynasty fan.  I'd asked Jon a week or so ago how long it would add to our trip if we drove through Monroe, LA on our way to vacation.  He looked it up and said it would add about 40 minutes.  I decided it wasn't worth it to just look at a building.  I said, "it's not like we'd see one of the people anyway."  So, we go on about our route as planned.  As we were walking through the parking lot from the hotel in Mississippi we walked past a black suburban with Louisiana plates and a tiny little duck sticker.  It didn't say "Duck Commander" or "Duck Dynasty" or anything.  Just a picture of a duck like their logo.  I said, "Look, Jon!  Ducky Dynasty is here!"  He laughed at me.  After looking at the fish, we walked upstairs to see the animals.  As soon as we got up there I saw John Luke & Lil Willie!  I said, "Oh my gosh, Jon!  They really are here!"  They weren't doing any kind of promotion.  Just shopping.  There was hardly anybody in the store.  I asked John Luke to take a picture with us after he took one with someone else.  I asked him if his parents were there.  He said just his mom.  I told him we watch their show all the time and he said, "thanks."  As we were letting the girls run around Annabel ran right up to Korie and I said, "hi, Korie" like a big dork.  She said, "Hi.  How are you?"  So nice and down to earth.  As we were walking back to our hotel we walked past them again while they were loading up their car.  I hope they didn't think we were stalking them, hah!  For those who may be wondering, Korie is a lot taller and skinnier than I thought, and John Luke isn't as tall as I'd imagined, but he did smell really nice.

We slept in a room with two queen-sized beds that night.  Jon slept with Adeline, and I slept with Annabel.  I use the term "slept" very loosely.  I think the girls were the only ones who got any sleep.  At one point, Annabel fell completely out of the bed onto the floor and never woke up.  Maybe I should have just left her there so she wouldn't have been able to kick me in the face anymore!  :)

The next morning we met up with my parents and were back on the road.  Annabel finally ran out of stickers and decided to take a nap.

When we pulled into the condo parking lot Adeline was screaming, "We at the beach!"  Annabel didn't care.

We ran to the beach as soon as we got our bags in the condo.

We quickly changed to swimsuits when it was obvious we couldn't keep them out of it.

It wasn't long after these photos that Adeline was stung by a jellyfish right on the inside of her thigh and crotch area!  She immediately started screaming hysterically and my mom ran out in the water to get her.  At first I was thinking she just got scared by a wave, or stepped on a sharp shell, but when she wouldn't calm down I knew it was something else.  She was pulling at her swimsuit and I quickly ripped it off her, but couldn't see anything.  Some ladies nearby brought over some meat tenderizer and said they figured it was a jellyfish sting and to put the tenderizer where she was saying it hurt.  It took her about 15-20 minutes to calm down and a nice bath, but then she was perfectly fine.  Of course Google had me convinced she needed to go to the ER, but the pharmacist at Walmart where I went to get some benadryl cream said just to make sure she could still pee.  As long as she could do that and wasn't having any difficulty breathing, she was fine.  She kept a little rash there all week, but didn't complain of it hurting anymore after the first night.  Praise the Lord!