marco island, florida {2011}

Our family just returned home from a wonderful trip to the beach!  This was our second time to visit Marco Island, Florida and we loved it even more the 2nd time around.  We stayed at the Marriott Beach Resort, it's a great place to spend a few days with the ones you love.  It's very family friendly!  I think this is turning into our summer vacay spot.  Molly keeps asking to go back to "our beach" and to "our hotel."

I took over 300 pictures - and since I've been a little behind on blogging I'm going to narrow down my pictures into a few of my favorites and post about our entire trip in one post.   So beware, this will be one long post with lots of pics. :)  Enjoy!

Day 1

We made it to the beach!  We had a great day traveling, even though we got up at 3:30am so that we could make our 6:20 flight, eeekkk!  Once we got to "our hotel" {as M calls it}, got unpacked and put our groceries away....  We looked around for Molly.  She was ready for the beach.  She had put her swimsuit on and started begging to go to the water.  We hadn't planned on going this night because we were so wiped out but neither one of us had the heart to tell her no!  I'm so glad she pushed us to go down to the water.  The kids loved playing in the sand and these are moments I will treasure forever.  Thank you Molly for being so persistent, ha!

I'm so cool I gotta wear shades!

G taking in the beautiful view

Grady experiencing the water/sand for the 1st time & Molly telling him all about it, she's a beach pro :)

M found some sandcastles that someone had built earlier in the day... she played and played in the sand.

Day 2

We spent the next day by the pool.  Molly was having a hard time keeping her eyes closed under water, so Adrian ran to a nearby Wal-Greens to get her some goggles.  We had a lot of laughs over these!  They didn't really work so well in the water, but Molly absolutely loved them.  She's our little "mad scientist."

That night we had dinner at Quinn's, a restaurant at our resort.  It was yummy yummy!

After dinner, we walked around the resort.  Here is our sassy girl posing {hands on hips} next to the large sandcastle in the lobby.

oh my.  I think we are going to have our hands full with this one... oh wait we already do, ha!

Day 3

The next day consisted of more pool time!  As you can tell, Molly was very happy about this.

She LOVED the water slide. 

Grady took the best naps each morning... while he napped Adrian and Molly would grab us some lunch and I got to enjoy "Kindle" time.  I read The Help on this trip and it was a great read, I highly recommend it and cannot wait for the movie to come out on August 10th!

after a morning at the pool, we thought it would be a good plan to go play in the sand....  well, once we got down there in the middle of the afternoon I decided that this wasn't such a good idea.  Molly was getting really red and we all need a break from the sun.  Before we went up to the room daddy just had to bury Molly in the sand..

....and mama had to take a picture with her in the ocean. :)

Back up in the room Grady had to get in on the goggle fun... check out his shirt, can you tell this guy is teething big time!  He still only has 4 teeth, I think he's going to get a ton at one time.

Day 4

The next day... more POOL TIME!

this guys loves his binky & shades.

sweet Molly...

After spending the morning by the pool, we headed up for naps and came back to the beach around 5:30.  This was the perfect time.  The crowds were thinning out and it was much cooler.  This was probably my favorite part of the trip.  It was so much fun to watch the kids play in the sand and water.  They were both relaxed, happy, and just enjoying the moment.  I wish I could go back to this moment right now....

"Hey I know... let's bury Grady!"  He was pretty happy and thought that dumping the sand on him was great....

...until he couldn't move!  Poor guy!

ahhh back to my happy guy. :)

"Super G"

Molly loved building sandcastles.

M is for Molly!

G is for Grady!

sweet beach babies :)

After beach time, we headed up to the room to clean up for dinner.  While we waited for our table, Molly struck a pose by the mermaid outside of Quinn's.

"hey, whatcha doing up there sis?"

After dinner, Adrian and I decided to surprise Molly with a nighttime swim!  She has never swam at night - we thought she would think the pool lights would be super cool.  Little did we know that when we got down to the pool we were going to be swimming with 100 of our closest friends.  The hotel had "family movie night"  and Toy Story was playing on a big screen right by the pool.  Molly was SUPER excited!

Day 5

Here we are starting our last day of vacation at the.... POOL! :)

so happy.

Molly and Adrian had a blast swimming together.  She loved for him to to throw her in the air.. here is a pretty fun action shot.

Molly's last time to go down the slide!

I had been saying each night as we watched gorgeous sunsets how badly I wanted us to dress up and get some family pictures.  I had even packed outfits for us.  So after spending the day at the pool and taking naps we decided that since it was our last night in Marco, it was now or never.  We got picture ready and walked outside to discover this.  UGH!

Luckily there was one patch of pretty sky left... we ran {speedy quick} to the beach and found a nice lady to take our picture.   We took the next series of pictures in about 5 minutes flat.  I'm glad we got some good ones, but was a little bummed that we didn't have more time before the storm hit.  I had some fun ideas... oh well, maybe next time.... :)

MKB & GJB

my baby boy.  love him.

my BIG girl.  love.

daddy and his babies.

me and my babes... {I'm lovin' G's face, priceless!}

such a big boy!

...and such a big girl!

We had an amazing time and are hoping to return next year.  It was so nice to get away with our little family.  We made lots of memories and I know that these times will make our family bond stronger and stronger.  We are blessed!