Family Tradition

The third week in August is a week that we look forward to every year. It is our longest vacation of the year, from Wednesday to Sunday (we prefer a few short vacations rather than one long one), and we spend it staying on the beach with Chris’ Dad.

He comes every year to the Perdido Beach Resort for a work conference, and invites us to tag along. PBR is an glorious place to stay, because it has two restaurants, a pizzeria, ice cream parlor, and poolside takeout restaurant, so it’s super easy to get anything that your heart could possibly desire after a lazy day of getting way too much sun.

We always have an adjoining room with Chris’ Dad (Papa), which definitely caused quite an “adventure” last year when Ali walked into Papa’s room and closed the adjoining door behind her, of which we had no key to rescue her.

Suffice to say, the first thing that Papa did when we arrived this year was give me his extra key.

Ali has come to love this tradition very much, and actually calls Chris’ Dad “Beach Papa” when we’re down here, as if he’s a different person altogether than regular Papa (which may or may not be true).

Although Chris and I came years before Ali was born, we didn’t really take pictures back then. (You know, Ali is much more photogenic than us and all.) But I do have ONE photographical shred of evidence of Ali’s TRUE first trip in 2006, three months before her entrance into the world:

Yeah. Don’t I get extra credit for voluntarily putting a pregnancy picture up?

At any rate, here’s a short historical jaunt through our beach trips, Ali-style:

2007, Playing leapfrog on the bed:

In 2008, she was more about cuddling on the bed:

But back to playing on the bed for 2009:

2007, sunbathing in the pool (and getting a paci tan line) with Daddy:

2008, Playing in the “Warm Pool” with Daddy:

(little did we know at the time that she was creating a hot-tub-baked-disgust-o-diaper during that adorable photo op)

2009, Building Sandcastles with Daddy.

(She was really wanting to build a pink sandcastle, but it seemed to me that adding food coloring to sand might possibly be slightly messy. And since we’ve already made our mess for the trip, they just made sand sandcastles.)

2008, More interested in her sunglasses than in playing with Mommy:

(Yeah, yeah, no picture of she and I in 2007. I was quite post-partum and apparently avoiding the camera quite successfully. But hey – give me some credit for posting the pregnancy pic, anyway!)

2009, drawing smiley faces and “A-L-I Ali” in the sand with Mommy:

2007, relaxing at the pool while her servants attended to her every diaper-and-milk need:

2008, relaxing with the one and only Beach Papa:

2009, relaxing while laying out and attempting to close her eyes (she finally figured out how to CLOSE her eyes, but still not how to do it without squinting mercilessly):
(Her reason for laying out? Well because Kitty was doing it, of course.)
Speaking of Kitty (who, by the way, is Chris’ Aunt who lives down here), here’s Ali in 2008 with Kitty and I:

And, 2009, “floating between them”:
Ali has definitely jumped right into beach mode quickly this year. I mean, she built a sandcastle, for goodness’ sakes!

Okay, maybe with a little help from Daddy:

And, of course, I’m playing my usual role of being “Parent of the Year” by letting her eat WHILE swimming, (as I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t allowed to swim until 30 minutes after eating…)

Which, really, I was much less disturbed by the possibility of her getting nauseous from eating and swimming simultaneously as I was by her eating with “baby pool hands”, which might or might not include water polluted by the snot that I’d just seen the other kid in the pool wring out of his nose and into the pool.

Ew.

Nothing like a good snot story to finish off an otherwise overly-sappy blog post, right?