Well, I flagged 84 photos to share from our vacation tonight! None are amazing. I dreamed of amazing beach photos at sunset with my kids dressed perfectly and it never happened. I dreamed of amazing candid shots of my kids and our friends playing in the ocean or on the beach and it barely happened. Barely. I was SO scared of my camera being out in the sand and wind! I was REALLY enjoying NOT shooting or working for a week! I was, for once, really enjoying the MOMENT instead of always trying to capture it. But man or man I’m not super excited about our beach photos!

And yet I flagged 84! HA!

So I am breaking our trip up into several posts so as not to overwhelm anyone and because obviously it will take me forever to get that many personal photos edited!

We left St. Louis on a Friday and drove partway to Louisville, Kentucky where we stopped to see the Louisville Slugger Museum.

Of course I didn’t account for the time difference and we got there right at closing time! Such a bummer! So we took the shot you just have to take (taken by a stranger for us), bought a little bat for each kiddo and headed on to our friend’s house where we were going to stay for the night!

Tony was C’s best friend in college, the best man at our wedding and is Bailey’s Godfather. He and Lauren have been our friends for a long time but because of kids and life we rarely get to see each other! It was SO good to see them and their gorgeous boys! We got there just in time for dinner and some backyard play!

Charlie LOVES his Daddy!

He also thought Chris was super funny!

The kids all played ball together with the two dads which was so fun!

Can this kid get any cuter?

Parker was SMITTEN with Lauren’s childhood horses!

She is such my horse lover!

The next morning we got on the road pretty early b/c we had about 12 hours to drive but Bailey was SO excited to get to feed John before we left!

To be honest I was glad I got to hold him too! He is all kinds of baby perfection!

Once we hit the road we just went as fast as we could because the beach was calling our name! My mom was awesome and packed us a cooler of grilled chicken and fruit so we stopped at an amazing park in Tennessee for lunch! Or maybe it was North Carolina. I’m really not sure. It was a LONG drive!