Florida, continued

Back-tracking a bit, here is the beginning of the trip...

Sporting her sunglasses for the car ride. The kids were superstars for the road trip. It took us 7 hours to get down there and 6 hours to return. We do not do DVD-player in the car, but they were happy with books, music, silly family games and GUM. Diego has only been allowed to chew gum on plane rides, but we let him get gum for the road trip and he was beyond thrilled. Of course Alexia wanted to try it for the first time and enjoyed her first piece for about 6 minutes, until she swallowed it. We let her try two more times and she ended up spitting it out because she didn't like the flavor. Diego probably had 8 pieces of gum on the way there since he liked chewing it and refreshing with a new one every little while. Since he knows very well that he cannot have gum again until another road trip or plane ride, we let him do whatever he wanted with those packs of gum! He was so good and as soon as we arrived, he put his gum away to save it for the ride home without us even having to ask him to do it.

20 minutes after we pulled into the house, we changed our clothes and walked straight to the beach via this pathway...

This is the little beach pavilion which houses the stairs to access the beach. The beaches of Seaside are simply breathtaking. The sand was so so so so fine and perfect and the water was delicious. I can just imagine what the water must feel like in the middle of the summer!

As soon as our feet hit the sand, Diego was amazed. He did sand angels, cartwheels and literally threw himself onto the sand and rolled around.

We had intended our walk down to the beach to be brief and all clothes to stay on...

...but shirts were soon thrown to the sand and to the waves they ran! This is Diego's expression as they were running to the water.

Alexia was still sporting her diaper from the road trip and got her clothes wet so decided she wanted to prance around in her diaper. She loved it just as much as Diego once she got comfortable.

Wild hair and no clothes, we decided to head back to the house for ice cream.

The house had this awesome screened-in porch with this great swing, a rocking chair and a table with lounge chairs. We didn't get many photos of the house and porch, but it was perfect. We spent a lot of time reading on the swing and the kids were able to ride their "moto" and "bombero" inside the porch while Ricardo and I hung out inside the house. This picture was taken quite early in the morning so it was still chilly out.

Diego's favorite beach activities were kicking this ball and playing paddle ball with Ricardo. Ricardo bought a paddle ball set and Diego was incredibly good at the game.

Sweet girl in her daddy's arms.

Here he is with the paddle. His coordination with it was quite impressive.