Beach Vacation 2017 - Dolphins!

One morning, we went on a dolphin boat tour. 

Since it wasn't as long and as rough as the fishing trip, everybody got to go on this excursion!

Daniel and Heather both took a lot of pictures while we were on the boat. 

I don't remember how long we were on the boat before we got to see some dolphins, but we eventually did find some dolphins. 

There was a baby with its mother, too! How cool. Daniel took this very cool picture. 

There were a few dolphins out there that we got to see, but it was mostly just very brief glimpses of them. I mean I wasn't expecting them to jump out of the water or anything, but I was expecting to at least go find another dolphin pod.

But we basically just turned around and started heading back to the marina. 

But then ... we saw this big pirate ship cruising towards us. The captain announced that we were under attack and if we wanted to help fight back, we could come to one side of the boat and get water guns. Or else we should go inside the cabin if we wanted to be safe.

And the next thing you know, the pirate boat start spraying our boat with water guns and water canons and a high-powered water hose. Haha!  The boys went over to help fight, but I don't think it was much of a fair fight. 

The funny thing was that I'd found a dolphin tour that included a water gun fight at the end, but we'd specifically picked this one because it didn't mention a water gun fight.

Even though we didn't see a ton of dolphins, we had fun on the dolphin tour.

After the tour, we went to grab lunch at Tacky Jack's, which was nearby.

This cute kid here was disappointed that he didn't see any dolphins on our tour, but he was sure excited about this elephant at the restaurant in the play area. 

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Beach Vacation 2017 - Fishing Family

One afternoon while we were at the beach, we went out on a chartered fishing trip. We caught several red snapper, a few mackerel, and some bonitas. 

Heather found us a good crew on the C-Rose charter boat. We drove over to Orange Beach to the marina to get on the boat. 

We got to the boat about a half hour early and the crew showed us to the air-conditioned cabin. We just enjoyed the ride out into the ocean. It took us about 45 minutes to get out to their fishing area.

Once we got to the spot, we each picked a pole and started fishing. 

We mostly used cut up fish for bait. You get to bait your own hook, but sometimes the crew would help if they weren't busy with something else. 

We started catching fish pretty much immediately.  When we got a fish on our hook, we would yell "FISH ON!" and they would come help us get the fish in the boat.

Carter caught a nice one!

Cornelia caught a King Mackerel. I'm only putting this on here so that I can remember it, but the guy helped reel this one in because it was so big. When he got it into the boat, he beat it in the head with a bar. It was kind of crazy! I was not prepared for that. 

Tyler caught quite a few fish, too. Everyone caught at least one fish, some people caught several. 

Whenever the catching would slow down, the captain would move us to a different spot. He was constantly moving the boat around to try to get us into the best possible spot to catch fish.

We didn't know it at the time, but we went on the last day of red snapper season. If we had gone one day later, we would have only been able to catch smaller fish. 

We thought we caught some pretty big fish, but when we got back to the marina we saw some of the other boats coming in with their catch and one group of guys had some really big red snappers. 

On the way back to the marina, we did some trolling fishing. The two reels that are bent over in the picture below are our trolling reels. They always look bent over like that until there's a fish on. Then the rod will jerk up and down. That's how you know you have a fish.  Everyone who wanted a turn got a chance to reel in a fish during the trolling. 

All the girls had fun fishing, too!  And didn't we look stylish while doing it? Haha! Maybe next time we'll all have fishing shirts like Heather's?

After we got back to the marina, we waited for the crew to clean our fish. 

Tyler and Carter were very interested in watching this process take place. 

The next day, mom trimmed up the red snapper and dad fried it.

It was pretty yummy. Maybe not as good as the fried catfish at Grandmother and Granddaddy's house, but it was still good. 

Overall, the fishing trip was really fun. I definitely want to go "deep sea" fishing again. I say deep sea in quotes because I'm not actually sure if it was considered deep sea, but I still really enjoyed it. I think we all did.  Oh, and nobody got sick on the boat. That was a big plus.

Thanks again to Daniel and Heather for some of the pictures from the beach!

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Beach Vacation 2017 - Lots of Crabs

One of the fun things we did at night on the beach is go out hunting for sand crabs. We had flashlights and would go try to snag them with little nets. Those things are fast!

Carter was really good at chasing them down and putting a net over them then someone else would come help get them into the bucket.

They are the same color as the sand so it's hard to spot them unless they are on the move. 

We caught a bunch the first couple nights and put them into a glass aquarium with some sand and some driftwood.

Since we had several crabs, we started only catching the big crabs. I think we found some pretty big ones, but I have nothing to really compare them to. I was impressed though!

One morning, there were blue crabs in the water along the beach! The boys decided to attach the little crab nets to some long driftwood sticks and try to catch the blue crabs. 

The blue crabs are pretty big some only one or two would fit in our little buckets at a time. We decided to let the sand crabs go so that we could keep the blue crabs in the aquarium.

Someone had to pretty much take each blue crab individually to the aquarium because they were so too big for the bucket. 

I don't remember exactly how many blue crabs we caught, but I think it was 10-12. We talked about cooking them for dinner, but decided we didn't have time for that. 

Crab catching was one of the things I really enjoyed about the beach. Who knew it could be so much fun?!

Thanks to Daniel and Heather for many of the pictures from the beach. 

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Beach Vacation 2017 - Beautiful, Relaxing Beach

Back in July, we went to the beach with our family! This is the first time my brother and sister and I have ever been on vacation together. We really had a great time together. 

We were at the beach for an entire week and there is way too much to share in one blog post, but I did want to at least start telling the tale. 

We stayed in a private beach house right on the ocean in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was called the Dancing Dolphin and we literally saw dolphins out our window several times while we were staying there. 

We took tents down to the water every morning so that we could spend as much time as we wanted down by the water without burning up. A couple of days the water was pretty choppy, but we had a lot of fun. One day, we even flew some kites over the water. 

I loved waking up and seeing the beach outside my window every morning. One morning, I woke up to see dolphins cruising by. The beach was beautiful. I can't say that enough. The sand was pretty and white, there was no trash or seaweed.

We took long walks on the beach every day. Sometimes we would pick up shells along the edge of the water. 

One morning, I got out early and went for a walk along the beach to look for shells but the tide was not right and I was not finding many shells. But I did see a double rainbow. It lasted a long time. I think almost all of us ended up getting a picture of it before it went away.

We saw a lot of birds while we were walking along the beach. This bird was fishing along the edge of the water and was not bothered by me at all. 

One morning, Heather and I were looking for shells and we kept finding sand dollars. They just kept washing up right in front of us.  How cool is that? They were all pretty small, but I think we got 6 or 7 sand dollars that morning.

We saw a few really cool sand castles. We made one too, but it was not as fancy as this one that we saw on one of our walks. 

It was so nice to be able to spend some quality time with our family. We miss them so much!

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Happy 7th Birthday Noah!

Sunday was Noah's 7th birthday. We celebrated with family and friends on Saturday night with cake and ice cream.

For the last several weeks, Noah has been telling us the wanted a specific Willy Wonka cake that he found on YouTube. It was a really fancy and complicated cake, but Mike kept saying that if anyone could make this cake it was me and Emily.

I think it turned out pretty good. The cake was a nine-layer white chocolate mud cake with vanilla buttercream between the layers. It was covered with chocolate ganache then decorated with colored fondant. 

Front of cake

 

Back of cake with the chocolate waterfall

Inside of the cake with nine rainbow colored layers. And all that delicious buttercream. I mean, it was really delicious, homemade, decadent buttercream. 

We also made some fizzy lifting drink. At first, Noah wouldn't drink it because he didn't want to be lifted. But he finally tried it and he loved it!

Isn't he sooooo handsome??

And of course we had to have plenty of candy at a Willy Wonka party.  It was a fun party and Noah was so excited to have his family and friends with him to celebrate.

Noah got a lot of fun presents. He loves art and he got a lot of art supplies. He also got some Lego sets that he and Emily have already been working on building. I wish I had some pictures of him with his presents. Mason got him a pirate belt and sword that he loves wearing every day. He also got his very first piggy bank with Noah's Ark painted on the side.

Sunday was Noah's birthday and he was also baptized at church on Sunday morning. What a special event to happen on his 7th birthday. We are so happy for him and proud of him!

Happy Birthday Noah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Links:
YouTube Tutorial for Willy Wonka Illusion cake
Instructions for Willy Wonka Illusion cake
White Chocolate Mud cake recipe
Buttercream Frosting recipe

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