Family Vacation Gulf Shores Alabama

Friday at noon I put the last Blue Catfish into his new home and headed home! This week we stocked thousands of rainbow trout, brown trout, channel catfish and blue catfish!! But anyhow, by 1 pm I was driving a van load of kids down to the BEACH!! About 300,000 other people had the same idea as well for this weekend....


This weekend is the national shrimp festival here in Gulf Shores. I drove through the night and arrived at our place on the beach at 3:20 am... We slept for a couple hours and then right full bore into a day of shrimp festivalling, swimming on the beach, swimming in the pool, and then capped off the evening fishing near the beach in our boat:





In just a little 2 hr fishing trip we caught 9 flounder and 1 pompano. When we got back we cleaned them up and cooked them fresh for dinner...

So anyhow, the shrimp festival is like dying and going to heaven for a guy like me. We feasted there for lunch! I carefully made the best shrimp choices possible.. There are like 100 vendors selling shrimp this and shrimp that.





After combing through them all I chose perhaps the smallest booth but they had a handmade sign that said "best fried shrimp n the civilized world" after chit chatting and sampling I told the gal that I dont want fries, I dont want cole slaw, hushpuppies or anything else in the box. I just want $20 worth of this shrimp..... SHEW BOY it was indeed the best fried shrimp I have ever had.... In fact I was smiling so big while I was inhaling the shrimp, the news cameras came over and asked if they could film me eating my pile of shrimp.... that was fun... I gave them some good footage with all kinds of cheezy audio....

So anyhow our first day of vacation was about as good as it gets, 83 degrees, sunny, calm, warm clear ocean water, great food, fun and delicious fishing, and just total relaxing on vacation... bout 8 pm Drake asked if he could go to bed!! At bedtime Drakes favorite part of the day was crafts at the shrimp festival, Mae's highlight was also crafts at the festival, but Noah's highlight was swimming in the Oceans waves.... Brooks highlight was the laying out chair at the pool and the laying out towel on the beach... My highlight was every minute of the entire day....

Oh yeah, a few days before we left for vacation, I took Noah down to Presleys to get a bow and arrow... he has been faithfully practicing with me the last couple months and his desire to shoot with me was just too strong to not get him started.... while we were at the store he said "dad, you just even thinking about getting me a bow makes you the best dad ever"...





We got the bow and he has spent hours shooting it! He has spent even more hours thinking and daydreaming about it though.. that is what is so cool, he is a dreamer like myself... he brought me home this picture from school... Me and Dad shooting our bows:


Then en route to gulf shores he spent a couple hours drawing more bow shooting pictures... this time he added my glasses to make me look more realistic:


Being a dad is the coolest thing ever. I wouldnt trade these moments for anything... You just never know what these kids are gonna say, do, think out loud, and ponder....to watch them grow up is just too cool...