Our Beach Trip

During mid-May, after much planning, we headed to the beach with our closest friends. (Unfortunately it didn't work out for my sister and fam to come...next year, hopefully!)  We stayed in Watersound, FL which is between Seaside and Rosemary. We rented a beautiful house and had beautiful weather.  My only complaint, it was too short! 

We also had a beautiful pool...

 Trey with Emma Kate and Thomas.

Emma Kate is the best little swimmer! She loves her pool ring.

 Brad, Thomas, James, Lee

snuggling on the porch while the boys played guitar

 Elliott and Blake checking out the gorgeous clear water

lots of girl talk in the sun

Lee and James 

Me, Kim, Amy

 We celebrated Trey's 30th birthday!! Claire made birthday cake cinnamon rolls and Rachel brought along some birthday decor!

James, Amy, Meredith, Rachel, Me, Kim, Lee

Our last morning in Seaside

I really don't have many words to describe the trip...it was just what we needed and came at the perfect time! I'm always so thankful for our sweet group of friends and the great time we can all have together. Looking forward to many more beach trips in the future!

Grand Isle

We spent our Easter in Grand Isle and took the "new" boat on its Inaugural voyage.  Elliott and I, his parents, and Todd headed down for a long weekend and despite wind and rough waters we caught fish! It was a great weekend although I did miss being in church for Easter worship. We also missed Evan and Claire who spent the weekend with her family in Jackson and Meredith who sadly had to work.
I'll let the pictures do the talking...

 El got the first catch! 

 three amigos

 caught some specs, too

the island from a different perspective...

our weekend catch

This weekend, we went back. This time it was us, Elliott's parents, and Evan and Claire. The boys came down Thursday night and fished EARLY on Friday. They caught some specs and went offshore and caught Lemon fish, Trigger fish, Spanish Mackerel, and Snapper. We (the girls) decided we weren't getting up that early on Saturday but we still ended up with coffee on the porch at 5 am.  

This was the start to a beautiful day on the boat and quite a successful fishing day!

We caught a ton of specs and then started losing them to dolphins who broke quite a few of our lines so we decided to head offshore to see if anything was biting by the oil rigs.

I have never seen anything like it. We took a nice boat ride to Fourchon where there are hundreds of rigs scattered for miles

 

 I'm not sure what I had caught but it got eaten by this shark!

My Pompano (apparently a delicacy)

Elliott's Mangrove Snapper

 and an ice chest full of speckled trout. 63 to be exact!

This morning after coffee on the porch at a reasonable time (7:30), the boys decided to go back out one more time before loading the boat back up. They came home with another 40 specs.

 Needless to say, we all came home with a lot of fish!