Sun, sand and WIND....

Aloha! No, we are not in Hawaii, so I guess in the South we would say “greetings from the beach y'all”.

Our first 24 hours in Destin were filled with the sun, surf and sand. And I mean a lot of sand, and it's all over the place. That would be my one dislike of the beach. We will be digging sand out of everything for weeks to come.

We arrived at Sandestin around 10:15pm Wednesday night and happily found ourselves staying in a “Junior Suite” at the Sandestin Hilton, complete with a set of bunk beds for the kids. After ooohhh-ing and ahhh-ing over their deluxe bed accommodations, they both made their way out to the balcony which overlooks the beach! Before we knew it, the kids had both comforters and pillows on the balcony and begging to sleep out there. We finally got everyone in bed around 11:15pm!





Thursday morning we woke up to a beautiful view of the beach:


Unfortunately, we were looking at the beach around 6:45 AM. Yes, goodness, no matter what time the son gets in the bed he is up before the sun. Why, oh why?

So we made the best of our early rising by joining the geriatric breakfast club at the Donut Hole. It's one of our favorite local restaurants. The coffee is always hot and the food and service are great. It is definitely a must if you are ever in the Destin area. I went out on a limb this time and got the Eggs Benedict with crab meat. It was too yummy for words.



After endless questions of “when are we going to swim”, “can we go to the pool now”, “why do we have to let the sunscreen dry” we finally headed out to the beach. The water was a bit chilly for the grown ups, but the under 9 crowd seemed oblivious to the fact that hypothermia could play a factor in today's activities.

Despite the red flags being out for gale force winds, we all had a sun filled good time. I guess all the beach glory caused me to have an ADD moment with the sunscreen, which led to this lovely sight:



For dinner we headed to Sandestin's Baytowne Wharf, which is loaded with shops and restaurants. We had our usual, seafood pizza at Robert's. After wandering around the village shops and making a few photos, we ended the day with a trip to the candy store. The kids got a bag full of mixed gummy treats and I got the usual caramel-pecan apple which I can never resist.










Bedtime ensued with two little people crashing and burning hard. But not before asking, “can we swim again tomorrow”. That will be all left up to dad, because I will be on official business beginning Friday morning at 7am. Let the educating/refreshing begin!