from new year's to newborns: Orange Beach Baby

Jared, Lila and I spent this past weekend in Orange Beach, visiting his parents and friends. We had a great three days! We got in late, like 1:30 a.m. late on Thursday night/Friday morning. Lila thought it was party time and was wide awake. She did give us some giggles though, so we did let her stay up while we unloaded and got ready for bed. She finally went to sleep about an hour later, only to wake up by 7:00, ready for the day! I swear, I don't know how she functions on such little sleep. Oh yeah, she can go to sleep whenever she wants.

So the three of us loaded up and headed to the grocery store, then stopped by McCarron Insurance. Jared's buddy Kevin owns it with his brother and we thought he would enjoy starting the day by meeting little Lila. By the time we got back to the house, it was only 9:30. I felt like we had already been up an entire day. Fortunately, the rest of the day was lazy. Fae & Randy (Jared's parents) cooked an awesome dinner for us and we visited with them the rest of the night.

We got up early again Saturday and headed to the beach (yes, after coating Lila in whitewash, I mean sunscreen). A family friend rents chairs and umbrellas on the beach and he set us up with both. We also had Lila's PeaPod tent to test. It is AWESOME! It has a blow up mattress and it provides UV protection. Here she is when we first got there and settled down:

Here she is 15 minutes later:

She napped for an hour! A whole hour! This was huge, since our child does not nap. Apparently the waves breaking, warm temps and cool breeze were too much for her. I'm moving to the beach. I read while Jared watched a movie on his iPod. It was indescribable. Our little family was together, relaxed and just enjoying the morning at the beach.

Since our little snowflake is quite delicate, as are her parents, we headed out around 1, but not without dipping her little toes in the water. She was not a fan.

Then we headed to change clothes and meet some friends at Tacky Jack's. Lunch was fun and quite tasty. Afterwards, Kevin took us for a boat ride. By this time, it was late afternoon and finally cooling off. We puttered around the bay for a while and enjoyed the company. Next was dinner with more of Jared's friends, then home. Last year when we visited, Jared & I had just learned we were expecting. This year, there were babies everywhere. Needless to say, we all went to bed much earlier than we used to!

Sunday morning we relaxed while Randy cooked lunch. He makes THE BEST ribs ever. We ate entirely too many, along with potato salad & corn on the cob. Yum! Unfortunately, Fae woke up pretty sick on Saturday and spent the day, plus Sunday in bed. We were disappointed we didn't get to spend more time with her, but we have to keep the little one healthy.

Here's how Gramma had to spend the weekend: