Typically over Thanksgiving we travel to Louisville to see my family, however, this year we decided not to travel for various reasons. (Turns out it was a great decision since my mom ended up moving to Florida the week prior LOL) Because we knew we weren’t traveling to Kentucky anymore but Randy had still taken time off work, we decided to take a real family vacation together, just the four of us! Not that we hadn’t ever been anywhere together, because of course we have. Every year we go to Disney World or Kentucky or North Carolina (or sometimes all of the above)! But we usually don’t travel with both girls and/or we travel with Randy’s family. And don’t get me wrong, because we always have a great time, but this time I wanted it to be just us. So I planned a long weekend to Saint Augustine and we left the day after spending Thanksgiving in Miami with Randy’s side of the family.

I love Saint Augustine. Even when I was a little girl, we visited often because we would go to Daytona Beach nearly every summer for family vacation and it’s a very short drive from there. I love the Fort there, I love the beautiful city streets, and the history is amazing (it’s the oldest city in the country, ya know!) And I knew I wanted to take Evan to a place she could play on the beach, and dig in the sand, and run from the waves! I booked a hotel on Saint Augustine’s beach just so sure Evan was going to love it. I mean, the last time I took her to the beach (a real beach with sand and waves and seashells) she loved every single minute of it! This time, the water scared her a little. I think it was a little cold and the waves were definitely bigger at this beach so they came up to the shore a little faster, so she wasn’t as a big of a fan as I’d hoped. Also, the weather was in the low 70’s and on the windy beach it’s definitely a little too chilly to spend too much time getting splashed. So instead of hanging in the sand and playing in the shallow end of the waves like I had originally anticipated we took walks, found seashells, visited the pier and drove into the city. All in all we had a great time, and even Elliott, at only 5 months old really just enjoyed the ride, the new scenery, and was very go with the flow!

I’m so happy we decided to go away for a few days. We spent 3 nights there and I think it was the perfect amount of time. Anything less would have been not enough, and anything more would have been too much. I couldn’t have been more proud of the girls and their behavior. We visited the pirate and treasure museum too, and Evan got to be a volunteer in Captain Mayhem’s presentation so she was rewarded with a gold pirate coin! That was definitely the highlight of her trip. And maybe the morning we visited MarineLand and she got to feed a dolphin. That was pretty fun too! (No photos there, unfortunately!) But take a peak at a few other images I took while we were there!