The Breuers: Breuer Beach Trip 2014

The last week of July we headed to Grayton Beach, Florida, for the annual Breuer trip. We missed the trip last year (to Colorado) since I was 9 months pregnant. So we were very excited for this year's trip! We hadn't seen the San Antonio Breuers since the last trip, and Lola had yet to meet them.

We rented a 7 bed/7 bath house in the Gulf Trace community of Grayton Beach. It had a pool and was a short walk through the neighborhood to the beach. It was great to all be able to stay in the same house. We had 11 adults and 8 children (plus 2 dogs), so it's hard to find a place to fit us all!

I won't recap what we did each day, as it was pretty much the same - relax, go to the beach, eat, go to the pool, eat, relax, etc. Since we were so close to the beach, people could come and go as they pleased, and it was a private beach, so we felt comfortable leaving our gear down there all day.

We knew Lola would love the pool, as she's been in one several times, but we were unsure how she would do at the beach. She visited the beach briefly when we went to Sanibel Island in February, but it was too cold to go in the water. The first few days the water was really rough and there were a lot of waves, so we just took Lola to the water's edge. But later in the week, the water was so calm. We took Lola in the ocean in her raft, and she loved it. She also seemed to love playing in the sand and climbing on our beach chairs. I think she will be a beach baby!

I definitely learned that it's not quite a "vacation" once you have children. Lola was still napping twice a day and nursing four times a day, so by the time I got her dressed and sunscreened and down to the beach, we'd only be able to hang out for about an hour before we had to head back to the house to eat/nurse/sleep. So we weren't always on the same beach schedule as the rest of the family, but we did get to hang out with everyone at least once on the beach. I did, however, reap the benefits of having the only baby, as everyone wanted to hold Lola and watch her, so I got several breaks (and of course Joseph and I took turns). Molly, our 11-year-old niece, particularly loved taking care of Lola. It was really sweet.

It was a wonderful trip. We enjoyed playing with all of our nieces and nephew (just one boy!) and catching up with the adults. It was sweet seeing the older kids interact with Lola - they all just loved her and she loved them back. We are already looking forward to next year!

Here are the photos from my DSLR. I didn't use it much because I was worried about the sand and water. But I did do one early morning shoot with Lola (taking advantage of the fact that she woke up at 5:30 every morning), although the sun came out right when we started, so the photos didn't turn out too well. We also did a family photo shoot on our last night there.

I'll post the highlights of my iPhone photos in a separate post, so as not to inundate you with hundreds of photos.