Did you miss the first two parts of our trip?
You can read PART 1 HERE and PART 2 HERE.
The fourth of July fell on Thursday this year and we have an annual tradition of going over to Katie’s condo with her family for a cookout for dinner.
Last year we opted not to do the beach on the fourth and instead did the pool and we decided to go ahead and do that again this year.
Britt wanted to bake a dessert to take over to the cookout so we did that in the morning before hitting the pool!
We had the best time. The kids LOVED playing with Daddy and I loved the chance to work with Spear on his swim skills.
It was such a pretty morning and a great way to have quality family time, we even met a HUGE turtle!
After naps we got festive and ready for the fourth activities!
Britt was so proud of her red velvet brownies 🙂
Tess wore a hand-me-down dress from Britt and Britt wore the same dress she wore last year. Yay for re-using outfits!
I got my dress randomly on my birthday shopping trip with Zach on clearance back in November and Spear’s adorable shirt from Old Navy on super clearance after last year’s fourth of July 😉
My babies!!!
Kye’s shirt was also something we already had – so literally ZERO dollars spent this year on Fourth of July outfits and they all came together so cute!
I love our tradition of visiting with Katie and her family on the fourth. It’s something we ALL look forward to and I just adore everyone in Katie’s family it’s
15 years of friendship and going strong!
Kye LOVED the food – bring on the RIBS 🙂
Katie’s fam has been staying at the same condo for YEARS and this year they discovered this AWESOME pond area LOADED with animals.
It was so sweet of Katie to plan for the kids to go check it out and it was SO AWESOME.
The animals were so active and exciting and we all had a blast feeding them – next year we’ll bring a lot more animal food 😉
The kids played some games and provided entertainment before we headed back in order to chill a bit before heading to the beach to watch the fireworks there.
Sweet Kye carried Tessie back to Katie’s condo because she had a bug bite. Such a good big brother!
While we waited we busted out the sparklers and Kye was the only kid brave enough to actually use them haha!
St Augustine does an EPIC fireworks show near Old Town but we never want to load up everyone and deal with the crowds.
So the last few years I’ve taken Kye and Britt to go to the beach to watch the local ones there and it’s always fun!
This year Tessie got to be included in the fun and it was actually the BEST year yet for beach fireworks!
We hooked up with our beach friends and the kids had a BLAST. They were hilarious all singing “Old Town Road” and they begged not to have the night end!
The girls really loved sharing a room on this trip and had the chill beach vibe thing DOWN by the end of the week!
Our last day was on Friday and we decided to use it as the “cram all the traditions into one day” day.
Every year we play putt-putt, visit Old Town, eat pizza, get ice cream, and visit a playground to ride the carousel.
We decided to arrange the day to actually hit up Old Town in the morning and eat the pizza for lunch which was pretty genius…except that the pizza place didn’t open as early as it said it did online and we had a bit of a wait!
So we went ahead and knocked out our annual pics on the cannon while we waited for the pizza place to open 😉
I LOVE these pictures every year! And it was nice being morning time and a little more shaded!
I love that Spear is old enough to sit momentarily solo on the cannon too!
Pizzalley’s is our FAV!!!
This year we also go much smarter with our ice cream. The kids all got KID SIZED cones and we didn’t allow them to have Superman (the really dark food coloring flavor)
Of course Smarties-Pants Tess picked BLUE which is practically just as horrible as Superman. But she didn’t get a DROP on her dress!
After we finished up our ice cream treats (and yes, everyone shared with Spear he didn’t miss out!) we headed over to the playground.
Every year we visit this playground. It’s so wonderful and shaded and has an adorable old school carousel that I just love!
It’s sad that we’re on our last carousel baby. Kye def made sure to point out that he was ONLY riding it for Spear 😉 Guess his days of thinking it’s cool are over!
Thanks to my sweet husband for snapping pics too!
We played for a little bit before heading back to the condo for nap time! It’s never quite long enough so we may try to have more time to spend there next year especially since Spear will be older and more into it then!
We took naps and ate a super early dinner and then headed over the play putt-putt!
I think it’ll really hit me that we are DONE with having kids when I’m actually ABLE to PLAY in the putt-putt game haha
Spear did SO well though, truly, he was happy to carry his putter around everywhere and I just kept my eye on him and Zach enjoyed playing the golf with the kids.
Tess y’all. BLEW US AWAY.
She didn’t want ANY help and held the golf club like a dang PRO and did AMAZING. She got TWO hole in ones and TIED with Kye for second place behind Zach!
She killed it!!!
It was a pretty good time to go (5:30) as I felt like we beat the dinner/evening crowd.
And we lucked out a bit that storm clouds came through and cooled things off too!
I was extremely proud of all the kids! Tess for stepping up and playing so well and being so into it, Spear for not running off, Britt for being excited to play and Kye for being such a good sport.
Kye is VERY competitive and I know it was probably hard to see his
The rain did end up hitting and it hit HARD.
We all made a run for it and decided for Spear and I to go wait under cover and the remaining four to just go ahead and finish the round.
They had a blast. The place was completely cleared out. And Spear and I just hung out and waited!
It was SUCH a fun time!
We got back to the condo and had a before bedtime treat (aka let me clean out the freezer!) while Daddy added up the scores (yes, he ALWAYS keeps score…you wonder where Kye got his competitiveness from haha)
Since it was the last night of the trip we wanted to let the kids have a lot of fun so the girls had popcorn in their room (HUGE no-no at home) and let them stay up until 9:00 watching movies (watch out for this cool mom over here!)
Kye and Zach had some video game time together which Kye LOVED too!
We had to head out by 10:00 am the next morning and packing up went pretty smoothly! Such a blessing to have older kids who can be legit helpful!
We had THE best year at the beach! The perfect combination of doing fun things and also just having CHILL time!
The kids all have such great memories from the week and we all agreed we want to stay in the same condo area again next year – I already booked us a unit 😉
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