The Beach '14: Annual Family Beach Picture

Annual beach photos. Came out pretty good this year ;)

The Beach '14: Boat Day

Wednesday of our vacation, we rented a boat and headed for the bay for the day. After riding around the bay for a bit, we went swimming and played in the water. 

We saw a guy with his dog coming in our general direction, toward the beach. Well, the dog decided to jump out of the boat and swam up to the shore. Then he came running down the beach in our direction and started swimming toward us, probably coming after the football! He swam right up to our boat, climbed up the ladder and went into the boat! It was pretty funny. 

There are hermit crabs everywhere in Destin!

Right inside the bay there is a huge sand bar called Crab Island. It has to be close to a square mile, maybe larger. It's a huge party sandbar. There are floating resaurants, bars, water volleyball, ice cream boats (even play the music), peanut boats, water slides/obstacle courses, jet ski rentals. You name it! 

The Beach '14: Stand Up Paddleboarding

So, there is no official photographic evidence of it happening, but Sarah and I did really go paddleboarding! We were nervous about taking our phones or camera while paddleboarding, since we weren't quite sure how it was all going to work out, so no pictures. But this picture is where we went paddleboarding! We look a 1.5 hour private lesson in the Destin Harbor. It was pretty cool. We both managed to stand up, didn't fall once and didn't run into anything or have anything run into us! It was perfect water - smooth as can be and not a whole lot of current. It was really fun. I kind of want a paddleboard so I can do it in the Maumee river (there are no algal blooms in the rapids by Perrysburg/Waterville in case you were wondering).

The Beach '14: Aarg! Ahoy Matey!

Tuesday evening we went on a pirate adventure! We boarded the Buccaneer and headed out to sea! 

Thanks to Aunt Sarah, the boys had some pretty awesome pirate glasses. The crew was pretty impressed!

The kids actually had no idea they were on a boat. They were too busy playing. They had a gun fight, sword fight, swabbed the decks, got their faces painted, looked for treasure and danced around! It was pretty fun. Ben was slightly hesitant at first, but got into it pretty quickly. Nick wasn't so sure. He participated on and off, but he still had lots of fun!

The Beach '14: Getting our Pirate On

Tuesday morning, in preparation for their evening pirate adventure, the boys practiced being pirates. They were pretty cute little pirates. Nick is a whistle blowing pirate, apparently.