our day in seaside

sorry about no posts for a few days...i have had an excruciating head/neck ache every day since we got back from vacation. i thought it was better and now it's back tonight :( boo
but, on to the pictures...

this was our day in seaside.
seaside is the cutest town you could ever imagine
(have you seen the movie, the truman show? it was filmed in seaside and i love to watch just to see all the things i recognize!)

this was a darling kids/toy store
it was filled with the cutest things--way too expensive but that is true of most everything in this quaint town. i don't think we bought anything but bookmarks!

this art gallery was beyond amazing. he uses pounds and pounds of acrylic paint on each picture. it was one of the coolest things i've seen. sadly, a $5000 painting was not in the vacation budget, so we walked on--not without the shop owner telling me that it would be no problem to ship to Plano!

chris & i outside my favorite book store

and inside

i love every thing about this adorable little store

the girls walking through the shops to get to the neighborhood

cute photo booth

LOVE this sign!

everywhere you walked there was beautiful artwork

love this sign too

at the book store i saw an entire book on the white picket fences of seaside.
i think i can do my own now!

cute french store

one of my favorite things is seeing all the old bicycles everywhere!

after i took this picture, amber asked if i just took a picture of the ground!
i love patterns, what can i say?

now my favorite part...the houses!
this house was tiny. you know how i love tiny things.

i loved the clean simplicity of this one

loved the colors and that big porch

oh my--this one i really loved!

more picket fences

i don't know if this was the tool shed or what, but it was cute!

i liked this little outdoor set up.

amber taking a picture

self-portrait through the glass.
LOVE that quote...whatever you are, be a good one

i thought this would be a pretty backdrop

so we got a quick picture

i think this building is so cool!

i love seeing so much white wood everywhere

the main street is lined with all these fabulous old airstream trailers turned into food trailers.
mckinlee decided to eat here...

amber & i went down to the hot dog trailer. these are amazing (organic, i think) hot dogs with none of the junk usually in hot dogs. they were good!

we were pretty tired by this point, so we just went back to the condo to rest.
i'll try to post some beach pictures tomorrow!

back from vacation

for vacation this year we went back to one of our favorite places...seagrove beach in florida.
it's about 30 minutes from destin but so much more calm and peaceful than destin.
it's a sleepy little beach town where people ride old fashioned bicycles with baskets and, in general, feels like you just entered 1955. we absolutely love it!
(bear with me as i post most all of our pictures throughout the week)

our car as we left

2 sleepy girls
(this year we decided it would be fun for mckinlee to take a friend with her, so amber was our extra girl for 10 days!)

this was our view for a lot of the time--pretty but boring after a while.

chris cheesing it up

taking my turn to drive

mckinlee

and amber...having fun watching movies as we drove

going through a cool tunnel

i think this is the uss alabama
(when i was a little girl we got to tour through this)

more trees

we made the mistake of driving in through destin and will never do this again--it added an hour to our trip. it was also raining and looking pretty bad when we drove in. we are starting to panic and think our whole vacation will be spent in the rain (the forecast the whole week was thunderstorms!)

we finally made it to our turn and were so glad!

this was our first year staying at this condo--one seagrove place. it was beautiful and right on the water.

i took pictures right away before we could mess it up!
here's the living room

we never actually sat in these chairs--but they were pretty.

our little kitchen

the pretty dining room table that we also never used!

we used this table to hold all our sunscreen and aloe vera gel

our bedroom that i loved!

the girls' room
(this was actually taken on the day we left. i realized i hadn't taken a picture, so the girls made everything look so nice for me to take one!)

as it turned out, we got to go to the beach everyday. it did rain a little but nothing like the forecast said.
i stayed inside to unpack and enjoy the condo while chris & the girls headed right out.
they are right in the middle at the edge of the water.

here's the view from our balcony on the first day

a & m playing in the sand on the second day

chris reading & my little area all set up

i'll stop here for now...come back tomorrow for more.