cookie factory

Julia was so excited to go on a tour of Bud's Best Cookie Factory here in Hoover. She went with Nana and with new friends Daniel and Joseph and their mom. The cookie factory was of course a huge hit. Eating cookies and riding a train? Awesome! Thanks to the Mauldin's for setting it up!

building sand castles

Julia's favorite part of playing on the beach was definitely trying to build sand castles. She could sit all day filling up her bucket, flipping it, patting it and trying to make a sand castle. She still wants to play with the sand molds at home. Her other favorite parts were pulling the wagon and watching Daddy in the really cold pool.

trains, a merry-go-round, and a purple octopus

We went to to Foley during our beach trip. We saw the train museum there, which had an awesome model train setup. (Note to self: It's only open a few days a week for a few hours). Julia kept looking for and watching Thomas that they had put in it for the little ones. She also enjoyed the small train the had outside and the life-size one, too. It got her to say "choo-choo!"

We ate lunch at Lambert's - which miraculously was not crowded. Then we shopped at the outlet mall, where somehow the most money we spent was two rides on this merry-go-round (In the video, you can hear her say, 'Ta-ta! Ciao!"). On the way back to the condo, we stopped at The Purple Octopus - per Julia's multiple requests - and had a snack.

Pensacola and Naval Air Museum

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We drove from the Orange Beach/Perdido Key area condo to Pensacola and Gulf Breeze on Sunday. Julia enjoyed seeing all the helicopters and planes at the Naval Air Museum. Her favorite part, other than eating astronaut ice cream, may have been seeing the space exhibits with models of rockets, astronaut uniforms and the Skylab II capsule. She now asks almost everyday to wear her Blue Angels t-shirt . The 'Julia Way' sign is near the house where my grandparents lived in Gulf Breeze.

Beach Vacation

We enjoyed a week away from home and Peter's work the weekend of and the week after Labor Day. We even braved a tropical storm at the beach and had a good time anyway. Tropical Storm/Depression Lee caused lots of wind and some rain, making for not-so-good beach weather during the weekend, but the last few days were great weather. We enjoyed having Grammie and Poppy for the weekend, but hate that they missed he good weather and took 'Lee' with them. The other good part was the we were away from home while our house in Birmingham was out of power for about 3 days.

You can see how windy it was in the pictures. The sand was blowing and stinging our legs. You could even see the sand blowing, causing the view down the beach to look sort of foggy. I had good luck predicting the weather changing and getting us back inside before the rain on Saturday, but on Monday we got caught outside in heavy winds, especially with the wind between the buildings. Peter had to carry Julia, with the wind was so hard it would blow me around. Julia liked to retell that part all week - "I was hiding in Daddy's shirt, and it was scary."