McGann Life: the trip of the rainbows

Our trip to Florida this year was "the trip of the rainbows". We saw soooooo many rainbows during the trip. The weather was pretty stormy and rainy at times so there were many opportunities for rainbow watching. We drove all day on Saturday, and saw several rainbows while we were driving through South Carolina. We think that these were the first real rainbows that our kids had ever seen. We got to the condo late, around 3:00 am, but only 2:00 am to us:) The kids went easily to bed after sleeping in the car. It helped that we already had their pajamas on and stuff.

The next day we went to the beach, of course! Even though it stormed just about every day, we still had beach time. There were just a couple times that we had to leave the beach a little early. Sometimes, there were storms in the distance and it was hard to tell which way they were moving. The kids loved being at the beach. The boys, especially Josiah, loved to boogie board. I boogie boarded with him, and he loved that! We went to the pool several times on this trip. Usually, we don't go to the pool, but the kids wanted to practice swimming. They have done soooooooo well in the pool! I am so proud of them! Summer of 2012 is the summer of swim!

We were on a super tight budget for this trip. I kept track of all of our money spending. So we skipped the dinosaur store this time, which the boys were surprising okay with! We also skipped Grills this time:( Next time we go to Charleston I will have to go to the Crab Shack for some seafood!:) We ate most of our meals at the condo. I even brought our Crock-Pot with us to cook low maintance meals. We were able to see Bim and Donna while we were there. We went over there one evening, and Chris and Bim came out to the beach with us one evening. While we were on the beach with Chris and Bim, we saw a dolphin come completely out of the water several times. And by out of the water, I mean we saw its whole body except for the tail. The dolphin was really close to some teenage girls that were out in the water. It was kind of crazy. Not sure what the dolphin was doing. I like to think it was warning the girls of a shark or something (like Flipper would do). It was close to 8:00 at night, so maybe:) We went to Gatorland one afternoon. We went right at 3:00 so we only had to pay half price, another predetermined move to save money. My Gatorland post is coming up next:)

Not sure when we'll get down to Florida again. We have an O'Brien reunion next summer, so that will be our beach week. We are very thankful for our vacation and the time to get away. Here are the long-awaited pictures that I'm sure everyone is ready to see. There are lots of them:

Here's one of the rainbows we saw on the drive down to Florida.

Ryan with the kids!

boogie boarding time

Josiah is the boogie boarding king!

surfs up!

my beach princess

go girl!

Josiah is filling the hole with water.

the kids

Ryan with Mercy Cate

the boys
you can see some of the stormy clouds behind them

Aedan and I

our yearly shot by this little shuttle

one more:)

We went to 7-eleven, and the kids got their first slurpees! I LOVE slurpees. I used to get one everyday when I was a senior in high school. I would eat a slurpee, an apple, and a bagel just about everyday. I wish Tennessee had slurpees!