Our Family Vacation to the Beach!

Wow, what a year so far right? This blog is all about our recent family vacation, but it’s been 4 months since I’ve last published a blog on my site, sorry guys the past few months have been a whirlwind, so I want to give you guys a brief life update.

Like the rest of the world, our life seemingly changed in what felt like overnight due to COVID. From having to work from home for my day job, pull the babies out of daycare, homeschool my oldest daughter, run my business while I emotionally dealt with the toll COVID temporarily took on my business, all while trying to stay sane was no easy feat. While I tried not to complain and remain grateful because me and my husband both still had our jobs and steady income coming in, I allowed myself to still feel all the feelings that were a consequence of our current situation. Some days were outright HARD. Then to pile on the death of George Floyd which brought the evil, hate, and racism that’s so prevalent in this country to the forefront was just enough to hop on the “2020 is canceled” train.

While I was preaching about taking advantage of all the “free time” some of us now had thanks to being stuck at home, I must admit I didn’t practice what I was preaching. A few weeks into lockdown I realized my goal was simply to survive my new normal. So that’s what I’ve been doing, is surviving.

I’m still working from home with all 4 kids’ home for the summer but now that we are able to get out a little bit more, I finally feel like I’m regaining a bit of my sanity lol.

Which leads me to our recent family vacation. We started planning this road trip/beach trip to Pensacola, Florida with my two sister-in-law’s and their family’s months before COVID came and canceled all of our fun for the foreseeable future. Of course, our family’s safety was most important so we went back and forth the weeks leading up to the original travel dates on whether we think we should push forward with the trip or not. Luckily things such as Florida’s beaches, restaurants, and public places in general started to open back up right before our trip. Personally, my biggest concern was how feasible it would be to avoid large crowds. With the trip being a road trip, I knew we could at least avoid large crowds for the travel portion of the vacation. I kept seeing news reports for Florida specifically, about how crowded their beaches were upon reopening, causing the cases of the virus to spike. It really freaked me out but my sister-in-law who visits Pensacola beach every summer kept reassuring us the particular beach we were going to never gets super crowded in general.

Literally, I believe just two weeks before our travel dates, we ultimately decided to push forward with the trip and I’m SO glad we did. My sister-in-law who took the lead on planning the entire trip for us, was right about the beach we were going to not being crowded. It wasn’t crowded AT ALL, making it very easy to social distance and stay 6 feet away from other people at the beach.

The drive is about 8 hours from Houston, where we live. We rented a car, but we cut the drive into two parts by going to my sister-in-law’s house in Louisiana the night before, then heading to Florida the next morning. It literally cut the drive right down the center which wasn’t bad at all.

I’ll start off with where we stayed. I shared videos of the condo on my Instagram stories and my DMs blew UP with so many of you guys asking for the condo information. We stayed at the Portofino Island Resort and you guys, I LOVED it. Our condo was a beautiful 3 bedroom & 3.5 bathroom condo, with a full kitchen, each room had it’s own full bathroom & ocean view, it had a laundry room which came in handy for the beach towels, and the oceanfront beach views from the balcony were dreamy. The grounds were beautiful and the resort alone had SO much that you could do.

There are multiple pools at the resort, a jacuzzi, full bar and restaurant in the pool area, and all. Honestly, you could literally just hang out at the resort the entire stay and never be bored. We also were able to reserve lounge chairs that come with an umbrella on the beach through the resort which allowed us to avoid having to look for a spot to camp out at on the beach.

We purchased the Adventure package through the resort, and it was so worth it. You get a wrist band that allows you to do unlimited jet skiing, a water obstacle course, kayaking, paddle boarding, and so much more. Me and my sister-in-law also took advantage of the spa at the resort and got a massage one of the days we were there, and it was AMAZING. If you have young kids but would like to take advantage of some of the excursions there, I suggest either bringing grandparents or going with a big group of people like we did, so you can have other’s who are willing to watch your kids for a bit. Each couple would step up and watch the kids while some of the adults got to have a little fun like jet skiing etc. We’ll definitely continue booking at that resort whenever we visit. I highly recommend it. Checkout the website to book and to see other amenities because I’m sure I’m leaving a bunch of them out.

The very first day we arrived at Pensacola we scheduled family pictures on the beach. Tip: If you want to capture family beach pics during your vacay, do them the very first day you get there before you get all burnt and dusty lol and before the kid’s hair is done for from sand and saltwater all week. We took them during the sunsetting, and they came out so beautiful. I highly recommend doing a family shoot while you’re there. The amazing Heather E. Adams Photography took our pictures. She was so sweet and patient with shooting 6 adults and 8 young children. Contact her to schedule a shoot while you’re there.

One of my favorite activities we did was a dolphin cruise we went on. It was through the resort so we didn’t have to pay extra for it but there are other companies that you can book dolphin cruises through if you don’t stay at the resort we did. It was a 2-hour cruise on a large boat with light bites, drinks, an open bar, and music. You sail around the gulf in hopes to see some dolphins. We ended up seeing quite a few and they got really close to the boat. It was such a cool experience. We planned on visiting some other tourist attractions such as Fort Pickens and the Pensacola Lighthouse as well, but we just simply didn’t have the time.

Some of the places we ate at were Crabs on the Beach, which allows you to eat on the actual beach and was such a nice scenery. Dog House Deli which was a hotdog place but had AMAZING nachos. And my absolute favorite place we ate at was Hemingway’s Island Grill. We mainly ate at quick, fast food or casual restaurants so we wanted to have at least one nice sit-down family dinner which we did the last night there at Hemingway’s. I don’t know if it was the fact that it was the first time having “real” food pretty much all week, but it was SO good. FYI the restaurants there won’t seat a party of more than 10 people together due to COVID, so we weren’t all able to sit together each time we went out to eat. We wanted to take advantage of the full kitchen in our condo and cook more but it was hard finding the time to grocery shop and actually cook. We had a whole schedule for each couple to cook and all but yea, that didn’t happen lol. It’s a great way to save money and make the trip more cost effective though.

 

 

 

You guys asked so many questions about our matching family attire while we were there, mainly our matching family swimsuits & trunks and they were all from Pat Pat Clothing. I’ve linked the exact ones above. You can also use code Courtney15 to get 65% off the site. Fair warning, matching family swimsuits bring SO much attention while out. I would think they would see that more often in Florida but apparently not lol. We got stopped so many times with people commenting on our swimsuits.

I went crazy and bought so much stuff that I thought we would need for the beach such as a tent (which was much needed), a wagon to tote everything from the resort to the beach, beach toys for the kids, beach balls, bubbles, kites, a portable cell phone charger, back pack cooler, and more. You can checkout this beach checklist here for all your shopping needs.

Honestly, our only regret was not planning for a longer stay there. We were there for 4 days and 3 nights. We tried to divide the days in half with hanging out on the beach for part of the day and doing activities at the resort of the other part of the day. There’s just so much to do there, we all agreed next summer we’ll stay longer. I have no other regrets. The trip was literally perfect.

If you’re itching to break free but want COVID safe options I highly recommend visiting Pensacola beach, especially if it’s drivable for you. Like I stated earlier, we were able to avoid large crowds and stay to ourselves the whole time there. I can’t tell you how good it was for the soul to get out of the house and have this quality time with my family. I’m already looking forward to going back next summer.

If you have any other questions about the trip just ask them in the comments and I’ll get them answered. It’s so good to be chatting with you guys on here again. Thanks for your patience and my goal is to be way more consistent on my actual blog.

As Always…Love you All,

Courtney N. Williams