Living Orange: Seacrest, FL

Last week we took our first trip ever to a Gulf Coast beach. Going to the Florida coast between Destin and Panama City seems to be a very popular destination for people that live here because it's a rather short drive (about 7 hours, if you don't have little ones - it didn't take us much over that though).

And it's usually beautiful with white sand beaches and crystal clear water with only small waves. Unfortunately we got unlucky with a tropical wave coming through when we arrived and a week filled with lots of thunderstorms throughout the days. When we weren't dodging lightning, we were dodging seaweed. The water was very murky as it was filled with both branchy brown seaweed and slimy green seaweed that filled your bathing suit - nice :) The beach was also beat up from the storms and not as gorgeous as we'd been told. But, it was still a great trip and we did manage to get to the beach every single day (even if for only an hour).

So we drove down on Saturday and were very happy with the beautiful house we rented in Seacrest. It was located in a small neighborhood of rental cottages (about 40 total) that had a large pool in the neighborhood. We had a three bedroom, three bathroom house and got it at a great price since it was the first week of the "low" season. Even though the boys could have had their own rooms, I think they were both a little nervous to sleep in an unknown place alone (and on the first floor with Brian and I upstairs in the master) so they shared a room and we had an unused room. Here's a link with pictures of the house (link).

After unpacking the car (in the rain), we headed over to Panama City for dinner and groceries. We did an easy dinner at Red Robin and got what we needed for the week.

The next morning the boys were up early, as usual. Our entire trip, Rylan got up almost everyday at 4:30 am. I was able to sneak him out of boys' room most mornings before he woke up Carter and bring him to our room (not that he or I went back to sleep).

Enjoying bagels before the sun was up ...

It was obvious that thunderstorms were approaching but we headed to the beach at 8 am to try to get in a little beach time. Our house was in the back of the neighborhood so we had about a 0.2 mile walk to 30A and the beach was just on the other side of the road.

We got in about an hour before dark clouds started rolling in.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, the boys talked constantly about using their butterfly nets to catch fish (we randomly got a minnow in one of our buckets when getting water for a sandcastle in Wilmington). So we tried a few times to catch minnows but all we got was a lot of seaweed.

The boys were pretty brave (for them) about getting in the shallow waves (just a few feet from shore). Brian then took them out into the waves on his shoulders. And the boys LOVED it. Can you see the huge smile on Rylan's face?!?

When we left the beach after about an hour, we stopped by the pool. After a few minutes it started raining but since it wasn't thundering (yet), it was just a little more water :)

It rained the rest of the morning and afternoon. But we found some things to do. The room the boys were in had a bunk bed (we hid the ladder at night) and they loved playing on the top bunk and watching TV up there.

After lunch we took a little drive - the boys napped and we navigated the monsoon (several roads were closed).

I brought along a few arts & crafts projects I picked up before the trip, including this clearanced kite from Target.

Miraculously we got a short break in the rain around dinner time so we drove over to Seaside (just a couple of miles down 30A).

This is the public access to the beach at Seaside. We didn't go down to the beach that night but did later in the week.