An amazing vacation!

Well, we had another wonderful fall break in Destin. We rented a huge beach house again this year with my parents, in-laws, and my brother's family. The house is almost 4000 sq. ft. so we are able to be together or retreat to our own floor or rooms. Brooks slept another year in our huge closet and this year he actually slept through the night in a pack-n-play! Hooray! Our house had its own pool, plus we have access to a large neighborhood pool just across the street and the beach is just around the corner. It was heaven on earth! Some can't believe that both my parents and Jeff's family go on vacation together, but our families get along beautifully. We are blessed with two great sets of parents and 4 wonderful vacation babysitters!
Our days consisted of getting up at about 6:00 AM. (Have I mentioned that Brooks is an early riser and his body's alarm clock is on eastern time?) Then we would play and go to the beach, come back to our pool, eat lunch, take a nap, play, eat supper, and go to bed. All the woman take a night and cook so we only ate out 2 nights out of 7! The most exciting part of the trip was our close encounter with a shark. We just got out on the beach on Tuesday morning and someone said, "Shark, shark." Sure enough, swimming about 15 ft from shore was a shark ( about 4-5 ft long.) We were amazed and then we all began sunbathing and playing. Jeff, Allen, my dad, and I decided to wade on out in the ocean an hour or so later. We were about chest deep and I hear Jeff yell, "There's the shark." It swam between Jeff and his dad. I yelled, "Daddy, I'm scared (I guess once a daddy's girl always a daddy's girl) and tried to get behind him and then I started to swim QUICKLY to shore. Everyone else stayed calm and stood still (Like you are suppose to do, but I panicked). They said it looked like that I was walking on water!! Anyway, it swam away and everyone else made it to shore safely and the coast guard drove down the beach and told everyone to stay out of the water. We ended up seeing 3 sharks that day, as well as, dolphins, sting rays, barracudas, and jelly fish. We later found out that they were having the fishing rodeo in Destin and they think that was what was driving the sea life inland.
Brooks enjoyed the beach after a few days. He wanted to go to the pool and play, but we kept convincing him to play at the beach. By about day 4 he was enjoying the sand and waves a lot more. He enjoyed watching Melia swim and Livie float around in the ocean. Brooks would "jump" the waves with Jeff some and then run from the waves. He was fun to watch.
We are thankful that we had such great weather, safe travels, heavenly accommodations, but most importantly wonderful life-long family memories!