navarre beach, florida

Last week, we took a family vacation to Florida. We went with our friends the Malahy's and stayed at a friend's condo on the beach. It was a great week of relaxing and just being together. This was our second year to stay in Navarre Beach. It's location is perfect: just a few minutes from Destin, yet far enough to feel a little more "remote" than Destin. Last year, Avery was just an infant, so we weren't sure how she would do this year. We worried a little about the heat and her reaction to the beach and ocean waves.

The first day we were there we took the kids to the beach, anxious to find out how our week would go...
Avery immediately decided that she didn't like the ocean OR the sand. David and I had prepared ourselves for that reaction before going down there, but we still held out hope that it wouldn't be so bad.

Honestly, I was kind of relieved that she didn't want to get in the ocean. If you know me well, you are aware of my insanely weird fear of fish. I seriously hate them. It's beyond hate, really... It makes my skin feel creepy just to think about them. The thought of swimming in the water next to them really weirds me out.

In my mind, the only thing worse than fish, are fish that bite or sting. While we were there, the jellyfish quotient was out-of-control. They were EVERYWHERE: little ones, baby ones, big ones. YUCK. The DJ on a local radio station mentioned that he had never seen so many of them before. People were getting stung like crazy. I even saw a lady scooping them up with a fishing net and burying them on the beach. Ugh. Needless to say, I had no plans to get in the water - regardless of how Avery felt about the ocean!

Since the kids weren't so keen on the whole beach thing, we ended up spending a lot of time in the pool - something that we could have done in Memphis. I am happy to report that Avery made a little progress with her fear of the sand during the course of the week. At the beginning of the week she wouldn't even put her feet down when we tried to put her in the sand, but toward the end of the week, she progressed to walking in it while holding our hands. Maybe next year she'll be more adventurous!

As you'll notice in the pictures, Avery had a blast hanging out with her friends Carter and Miller. One of the advantages to having a photographer as a friend is that Josh took tons of precious pictures of Avery while we were there, I'll be sure to post some whenever I can get my hands on them! For now, you'll have to suffer through mine!

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