Hello friends!

We’re back from Florida vacation with Sully’s family! We made tons of great memories, enjoyed oceans and pools, played board games and night volleyball, ate lots of ice cream, laughed at the antics of 11 nieces and nephews, and survived a ridiculously awful (and contagious) stomach virus.

I have way too many good photos to fit in one post, so look forward to more pictures and stories to come! I’ll start us off with a collection of beach and pool photos. Keep scrolling for adorable small children and pretty oceans.

All the beach pictures are from Vero Beach, FL. The waves were ENORMOUS and also full of seaweed.

Throughout this whole trip, I had so much fun watching the adults and older kids look after the younger ones. I am so blessed to have an amazing family-in-law as well as an amazing family!

Harrison helping Cole and Caroline with something. Possibly helping Cole with sharing, haha.

I love this one so much. 🙂 Some of the boys building a sand fort to withstand the waves.

Henry concentrating deeply on moving his bucket of sand.

More sand fort building.

Another favorite. It was so cute to watch the cousins playing together. 🙂

Look how much seaweed covers the shore. O.o

HAHA these pictures crack me up. William, well-protected against sunburn, patiently carried bits of seaweed to the ocean, trying to return them to their rightful place. He didn’t seem to notice when the waves brought them right back again.

Anna, my sister-in-law’s sister, apparently has a hidden talent for frisbee-throwing. She and Tim (Sully’s dad) played an impressively good game together.

This looks kinda like a vintage postcard or something, you know? Some of these pictures are kinda hazy since my old camera’s lens got fogged up while I was out there.

The Alexanders have a really nice beach tent where onlookers can congregate to watch the little ones having fun. Sully mostly stayed in the tent but he did come jump some waves with us sometimes!

One day some of the Hammer kids and I built this sand sculpture together for a contest. We got second place. 🙂 It was really hard to get a good picture of it but it was really neat-looking in real life!

The resort we stayed at had an amazing pool slide! Every other day there were slide races with prizes. The Alexanders are SUPER competitive about it which I found hilarious. The kids and adults gathered a good collection of medals and prize bracelets by the end of the week. 🙂

I played a lot with Caroline and Eleanor, pretending to be a boat and pulling them along on pool noodles. 🙂 We also had some fun games of beach ball catch with the older kids & adults.

Caroline wanted me to watch her come down the slide. 🙂

The second week we stayed at a big house in Orlando with a small pool out back. Bubbles were a popular form of poolside entertainment.

The grandparents came for this part of the vacation and helped/enjoyed watching the kids. Oma and sweet baby Ellanie. ❤

Megan also joined us for the second week! Privileges of being Harrison’s girlfriend. 😉 I think she’s helping the boys with pool toy rockets here.

Water guns were also immensely popular pool toys.

Cole loved to shoot people but wasn’t always pleased about getting squirted in return, haha.

Prepare to see more Cole pictures in the next post. He’s adorable. XD

That’s it for the first vacation post! I’m really excited for the next one – you’ll get to know Sully’s family a lot better in it. Plus there’s tons of cute kids. Until then….

Favorite photo? Do you prefer beaches or pools?

Thanks so much for reading, my friends, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Ocean photos taken with my Nikon D3400 and a 50mm lens. Pool photos taken with my D7200 and 35mm lens. Edited with Lightroom.