Gulf Shores - Day 4 - My Birthday!

Friday was our last day at the beach, and also happened to be my birthday!  I woke up feeling better than I had the night before, which was nice!  I always get up early, so after grabbing my morning cup of coffee, I went to sit out on our 18th floor balcony and looking over to the ocean/beach I saw this...

People had been writing messages in the seaweed all week, and we would laugh at all the messages.  Just the day before it said "Happy 70th Frank" and we happened to be on the balcony to watch "Frank" lay down by his sign and take a picture.  Then when I woke up, my silly husband had changed Frank to "Whit" and I got my special birthday message in the sand.  =)

I don't know how I ended up with Brynn's Ariel towel around me, (and I just fell asleep in my dress from the night before), but once Brynn woke up we had a little birthday celebration that morning.

The weather was kind of yucky but it was supposed to clear up later in the day, so we decided to eat my birthday meal for lunch instead of supper.  We were also celebrating Curt passing BOTH of his pharmacy Boards!  YAY Curt!  We headed to one of our favorite restaurants in Gulf Shores...Original Oyster House.

They have a bunch of cute shops you can browse while you wait...clearly these two had fun shopping!

When lunch was over, it was starting to clear up, so we headed out to the beach and let Brynn play in the waves for the last time.  We ate some leftovers at the condo and then around dusk we headed out to get ice cream and take Brynn to a souvenir shop.  She had been wanting to walk in the "shark's mouth store."  =)

We had such a beautiful view all week.  Then we headed out for ice cream and this is what the sunset looked like..SO PRETTY!

First, we headed to this boardwalk thing where you were supposed to MAYBE see some alligators.  We didn't see any and it was getting pretty dark, but we had a lot of fun.  We started calling pretend alligator names and somehow turned it into a game of yelling all names that start with A.  Just a funny moment...always fun with my family!

I told Ryan I swore I saw an alligator, but it turned out just to be this stick...

The moon was SO PRETTY all week.

Then we got some yummy ice cream!  We ate it near that boardwalk thing and I was a little nervous that alligators were going to walk around and get us while we were eating!

She picked out a pink stuffed turtle for herself and a pink sparkly stuffed dolphin for Emory.  She was really excited to go in this store...I didn't think we were ever going to get her out of there.  "Look at this guys..."  Even my mom wanted to buy Brynn a hermit crab!  WHAT?  We DID NOT get one of those.  But thanks for the idea mom...maybe you can get one and keep it at your house??

She was TUCKERED out the next morning when we got on the road.

We left around 8:30 on Saturday morning and couldn't wait to get home to Emory.  We had such a great time with our family and spending special one on one time with just Brynn.  CAN'T WAIT TO HEAD BACK NEXT SUMMER!