The Journey of Parenthood…

Spring Break Cocoa Beach Trip 2016

I’m allll about going away as much as possible as a family. Hello Spring Break is a great excuse for a little trip, right?!?! Something that is important to both Zach and I is for our kids to have a love for places that are special to us. We got married in Cocoa Beach, Florida (most of my family is from near the area and I was born there) and LOVE to visit. I love that all of my babies first touched the ocean at the same beaches I did! 

We have had decently good experiences staying at a hotel in Cocoa Beach. Wakulla Suites. CHEAP and meets our needs. 2 bedrooms, closet big enough for pack and play, small but functional kitchen, on the beach. Sometimes you shouldn’t mess with a good thing…and this trip was one of those times. Zach doesn’t love Wakulla. It’s pretty dingy and we had a few issues with other people staying there recently so we thought we’d try somewhere new this time around. It was Radisson Resort at the Port. AWESOME property. Only a few dollars more per night than where we normally stay. It isn’t right on the beach but we didn’t mind that too much. It said on the listing that it was a TWO BEDROOM and it looked so nice that I snatched it up. Then a couple days prior to our trip I called to make sure we had the larger size room etc and was told the listing was misleading…it was a 2 bedroom room. As in a room with a couch and a separate room with two double beds. CRAP. It also didn’t have any sort of kitchen and only had a mini fridge and microwave, which were in that same room as the couch. Less than ideal situation for our family of FIVE, especially when sleep is something we value.

Also in the days leading up to the trip the weather was nooooooot good. We decided to go down early and hopefully hit the beach the day we arrived. Just in case it rained all weekend, we could at least get some beach time in!

Stopping at a BK for lunch…I told the kids they could sit anywhere they wanted haha Clearly the sibling love is strong 😉

Tess loved the phones 😉

We literally walked in the room, dropped our stuff and changed into suits. So not our typical arrival day agenda but we were pumped for some beach time!

We were in SUCH vaca cool parent mode that we completely forgot to bring towels to the beach. Who are we? haha! We were at a little public spot so there wasn’t even a shower or anything. We were all COVERED in sand and soaking wet. Someone did let us in a nearby hotel pool area to shower off but then we were still all wet and no way to get dry for the car. One kid sat on a beach blanket and another one sat on a pool float in the car seat haha Parenting WIN!

We even hit up the awesome pool when we got back…and they had towels!

Zach went to the store to get necessities while I fed kids dinner and unpacked 🙂

Night one we put Tess in a BIG closet in the main area and put Kye on the fold out coach and had a blow up mattress on the floor for Britt. We let the big kids hang with us in the bedroom until Tess fell asleep. We played UNO and attempted to take selfies!

Night one was ROUGH. The little closet just didn’t work out well at all. And when Tess woke, she woke the big kids too. We figured we’d try it b/c it was the best solution for us if it worked! It meant we still got to eat dinner/watch movies/use the bathroom without worrying about sleeping kids in our area. 

The next morning we took our time getting ready to head out to the beach! We packed the kids lunches and rearranged sleeping situations. Kye brought his HUGE Star Wars book and was ALL about it. It was cute seeing him teach Britt about Star Wars (she knows she’s not allowed to watch it until she’s 6 but she already knows all the characters names). 

We found a better spot to park to go to the beach AND we brought towels haha

Tess’s stink eye game is SO strong!

Good luck to Lindsay on our next family photo shoot…Tess is IMPOSSIBLE!

So thankful to have two older ones who are easy to work with for pics!

We’ve just recently discovered the amazing thing that is the beach in Spring and Fall rather than Summer. The weather is AMAZING!!! It was the end of our Spring Break but not Spring Break in Florida and it wasn’t crowded at all and we had an awesome time!

I love how happy she is at the beach! Def her happiest place 🙂

Britt makes me feel SO COOL when we are at the beach. Kye is always all about Zach and Zach is more of the “fun parent” in majority situations. But at the beach? Britt thinks I’m SO awesome. She loves to play this “meow meow” game where we pretend to be cats and only can say “meow” and we catch “fish” in the water and eat them. She remembered it from last year and wanted to play it the entire time. I was all about it 😉 

Daddy is very into the mud castle building which works out GREAT b/c it keeps the kids pretty occupied!

Boogie Boarding KING right here!

I knew with Tess being mobile now that the beach would be a lot more stressful and it was! It’s a time where you can really feel how outnumbered you are b/c you can’t have one parent per kid anymore. I was thankful for the moments where she just wanted to SIT and SNUGGLE

I love that he loves to find seashells. Daddy can have the boogie boarding Kye, I’ll take the seashell hunting one 🙂

We went back and jumped in the pool before naps and reconfigured some stuff for nap time. We moved Tess to our bathroom and had both big kids nap in our bedroom and we hung out and ate lunch in the main room. That meant going to the lobby for the bathroom which was pretty embarrassing considering a HUGE group of people were checking in and I was rocking a “treat your self” shirt haha 

When I went in to wake the big kids from nap I cuddled with each of them and as I was cuddling with Britt Kye said “I just pulled out my tooth!” I mean hello brave child! First loose tooth and he just yanked it on out of there! 

Kye’s growth delays meant we were anticipating for him to not lose a tooth until he turned 7 and sure enough a couple weeks after his 7th birthday he lost his first one! BIG BOY STATUS!


 We hung out by the pool and ate dinner (Tess was pretty fussy which was aggravating but the dinner did take kinda forever too) and just enjoyed special family time!

Before bed we had to write our tooth fairy note and I’m thankful we brought along the special tooth fairy pillow I bought for him like 3 years ago and the book I bought recently. The pillow gives a special spot to keep the tooth and to put the note! Kye asked the tooth fairy to let him keep his tooth so he could put it in his book 😉 

For this night we put Tess in our bathroom and Britt switched with Kye. She got to sleep on the big bed and he slept on the air mattress beside her. We let them talk for a little while and play before going to sleep. It was SUCH a fun day and one that will always be special to me 🙂

Emily Parker
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