summer recap pt. 7: r & r

This brings me to my final recap of the summer, I promise! This one was completely different from the others in several aspects: I was responsible for NO ONE, I FINISHED a book, there was NO in-flight/bus restroom facility and NO name-tags!!! This, my friends, was a much needed and appreciated vacation :) My family (minus one sister and plus two grandparents) set out for the beach!

The beach, as I think I have mentioned, is quite possibly one of my favorite places on earth. One of my favorite things to do at the beach is to listen; there are so many sounds to be heard and rejoiced in! Start with the morning; what do you hear? Nothing! No alarm clock to wake you up! This sound is golden and sets the pace for the rest of the day. Kids splashing in the water; this is the sound of no worries and no homework. Friends catching up over sweet tea and grilled hamburgers; this is the refreshing sounds of time spent and memories relived. The waves crashing into the shore; this is perhaps the most beautiful sound of them all. It is the sound of God’s greatness and His beautiful creation.

There are many other things I love about the beach as well: the cool relief of the water, the laid back atmosphere, the food, relaxation, the liberating feeling of detaching your cell phone from your fist (you can’t take it in the water!!!), etc. I could go on and on and on.

Just when I thought that beach trips couldn’t get any better, my family stumbled across a hotel with the never-seen-before; a gem if you will. There, in the back yard of our hotel, was an oh-so-wonderful lazy river!!! I’m telling you it was AMAZING!!! Imagine getting up in the morning, ahem, afternoon, riding the elevator down to the ground floor, grabbing a tube and stepping in! Although you can’t tell it by these pictures, space in the lazy river was most coveted. (This was taken just before a storm.)


Mom and I probably spent 90% of our time floating around in circles. I think it was day 3 before I even remembered there was a beach on the other side of the fence. Ha!

As I said earlier, the food is another awesome part of the beach. We ate most of our breakfasts and/or lunches (some of us did not make it up in time to squeeze both meals in) in our condo as well as several dinners. On the nights we did go out, though, we had a hard time trying to choose a place to go!

One of our favorite places to eat at is Lambert’s, Home of the Throwed Rolls. This has some of the best and largest portions of good ole Southern cooking ever. I have found the best way to prepare for a meal here is to not eat for a week leading up to your anticipated dinner. I’m so serious! Before you even give your drink order you are served a heaping scoop of fried okra!!! If you enjoy being rolled out of the door by a bull-dozer this is the place for you to eat. I wish I could tell you I was kidding but I would be lying. And yes, they do throw rolls at you. If you don’t want a roll DO NOT make eye contact with the Roll Boy :)

This is post-food consumption; notice how we are standing with uncomfortably large spaces between us. This directly correlates with how big we FELT at that moment. You may also notice how I planned ahead by wearing a dress. Ha!



We found an Alabama car with Texas A&M cover in the parking lot! If I were to be honest with you I would tell you that the whole time we were standing by this car I believed that I was looking at an ‘A’ for Alabama. I might would even tell you that I was confused as to why I was doing my ‘Whoop’ thing and Andrew was doing his Sophmore ‘A-A-A-A-A’ thing while posing; but that would be embarrassing  Oh, and don’t mind the purple hair, he simply has a lot of school spirit.

Unfortunately it stormed a lot while we were there. It was probably a good thing, though, as we needed a break from the sun. This storm came in at about 94 miles per hour and had the lazy river cleared out in .8 seconds. Look at how cool it looks, though!


While there we celebrated my Grandmother’s birthday with hot fudge cake!!! My mom has a recipe for a secret sauce that when added to your out-of-the-box Pillsbury chocolate cake and square slab of ice cream turns into heaven in your mouth. Thankfully we did not celebrate by going to Lambert’s AND eating hot fudge cake in the same night! It was so special to spend G Thorn’s birthday with her!

We went shopping several different nights. There were 3 stores open in this particular outdoor shopping center but we were able to take some pretty cool pictures!


So long, beach, I miss you already :) I’ll be back as soon as I can!