Santa Rosa Beach 2012

It's Friday night - the last night of our vacation in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.  J.P. is sleeping upstairs and Joey is sleeping in the stroller beside me in our beach house ("Slice of Paradise").  Jude is down the street, visiting with her Tulane friends for a few minutes before she goes to bed.  Yet again, a week at the beach has passed by too quickly.

Things I'll remember from this trip to the beach, our first with J.P. and Joey, in no particular order -

• When we left our house and drove south on I-65, we hadn't even reached the Old Hickory Blvd. (Brentwood) exit before J.P. said, "how much longer until we get there?"  I'm not even kidding.
• J.P. loved the bunk bed in his room at our rental house.  He especially loved taking his afternoon nap on the top bunk the last couple days of our visit.
• Each morning, I ran early, then J.P. and I walked up the street to one of the swimming pools in our complex for a swim.  We had the pool to ourselves and swam for about an hour, just the two of us.  That was probably my favorite part of the trip.
• J.P. loved the ocean, more so than on any other trip we've taken with him to the beach.  He spend a good deal of time in the water.  
• One morning after it had rained, we went to the beach.  Jude and J.P. found several shells.  J.P. walked up and down our section of the beach, showing his bucket of shells to everyone he ran into.  
• I enjoyed feeding Joey his bottle at the beach, underneath the umbrella we'd rented for the week, watching Jude and J.P. play in the ocean.
• Each morning, we carried so much gear to the beach - bouncy seat, blanket, beach towels, kick board, assorted buckets/shovels, snacks, bottled water, sun screen, camera, etc.  Okay, so that's not really a fond memory.
• We rented bicycles and a trailer for J.P.  Jude didn't ride hers the entire week and J.P. and I took my bicycle out twice for short trips.  He and did ride up to "Local Catch" for lunch, after which we rode home in a thunderstorm.
• We spent lots of quality time with Jude's Tulane friends and their children.  Jude and I got a kick out of watching J.P. play with the big boys (Ben Russell, Trent Williams and Nate and Andrew Fitzpatrick).  
• We had a crazy dinner for 20 at Elmo's on 30A, after an hour wait.  
• Joey and I drove over to Grayton Beach every afternoon for a quiet interlude, while Jude and J.P. napped at our rental house.  We found a quaint coffee house - Grayt Coffee House - and spend a couple of afternoons there.
• Once again, I ran on the trails around Draper Lake.  I discovered some new trails on the other side of 30A, across from Draper Lake (single track, mostly sand), in a new development ("Pelican").  One morning, toward the end of a 5 mile run, I tripped over a small tree stump or root and did a complete face plant on the downhill portion of one of the trails in the Draper Lake development.  Fortunately, the trail consisted of sand, pine needles and twigs, so I was uninjured other than scratching up my chest and stomach.

Those are just the high points.  It's been a good week, although there isn't a lot of vacationing to be done with a 4 year old and 4 month old.  We're looking at a long drive tomorrow, but it will be nice to get home.