Mother, Mother Ocean, We have heard your call.

This was such a wonderful weekend. We enjoyed a great little trip to Gulf Shores, AL, with our friends Mandy, David, Annalyn, and Chuck. It's funny how the trip came to be and how it all worked out so well.

We stayed at the Lighthouse Condos on the beach. Our condo was beautiful, with three bedrooms, three baths, a full laundry room, kitchen, dining area, and living room. The best part was the awesome view and the huge wrap-around balcony.

We drove down early Saturday morning and arrived and had a little lunch at the Shrimp Basket. We spent Saturday afternoon unpacking, hanging out in the condo, and walking on the beach. We even wandered on down the beach to where the stage had been set up, just to scope out where we'd be for the concert. We had a great dinner of gator bites (Sam) and tilapia and veggies (me).

Sunday was spent hanging out at the beach, swimming at the pool, walking at the shore and getting our feet wet, and watching the boys play washers and corn hole. We got ready to head to the concert around 4 p.m. Sam and I went ahead and got in line for shirts. We were able to get shirts for him and a friend, but they were already out of my size. I guess that was to be expected since some parrotheads were in line for the concert since 8 a.m.! Anyway, there were 40,000 people there. The concert was fantastic in person. JB even kept on playing an hour and a half after the televised portion of it was over. Great concert and experience! I think it's great that he did this in order to encourage tourism to the area.

Here's a few minutes from the concert...

The girls went shopping at the Tanger Outlets on Monday. I found some cute things for Sam and me at Gap Outlet and Banana Republic Outlet. Afterward, we met the boys down at the beach to hang out and relax. There's nothing like a nap at the beach!

We enjoyed dinner at Lulu's Homeport. I've seen other people's photos of their visit to Lulu's, but I didn't realize how big that place is! It's a restaurant, sand playland, concert area, snow cone place, hangout, dock, gift shop, and more all wrapped into one. The drinks were cheap, and the food was good. Everyone was happy!

That evening we had a little early birthday celebration for Chuck and then went on a little crab safari down on the beach.

It may be hard to see, but some of our little group were walking back up to the condo right here in this photo. See that big lit up balcony at the top left of the building? Yep, that whole thing was ours! I already miss that place. :) When I win the lottery, I think I'll buy it!

By the way, the only time we saw or felt a little oil on when we were in the water was on Saturday evening. You couldn't see it, but you could kind of feel it on your skin a little bit. On Sunday, there were lots of boats out cleaning the water, so the rest of the weekend we saw no evidence of oil.

This trip was a lot of fun, but it was also a reminder of the often negative human impact on our environment. I hope the effort to clean up the gulf continues and that this event is a longlasting reminder about how delicate our earth really is. It definitely has me thinking about things I can do differently at home and in what I teach to my kindergarten kids to help the environment a little more.

On a lighter note, here are photos of the cute shirts we bought. This one was from the concert:

This one is from Lulu's. You can order it online, and all proceeds from it go to a scholarship fund for a child of fisherman who has been affected by the spill (The University of Mississippi will select the recipient.) It's a cute shirt with a cause!