Florida

We just got home from spending a week in Florida with some friends, and it was so beautiful! We took the trip with a college friend of ours and his wife, son, and their good friend. It was a relaxing trip with a lot of time spent on the beach, in the pool and enjoying our Airbnb. We had some lovely dinners, but by the end of the trip I was tapped out on trying to have a nice meal out with an almost 10-month old. Phew!

Surprisingly, the kids did well on the flights and the travel wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. That was the part of the trip I was most anxious about, long travel days and flights with a baby and a toddler. I reminded myself that I just needed to stay present to get through it. It’s a necessary evil if you want to travel with kids, and I understand why some people skip it entirely. It was tiring but definitely worth the reward of a lovely, beach vacation.

We stayed on a stretch beach called 30A, which is on the Florida panhandle in between Destin and Panama City. It was beautiful and clean, and the beaches were pristine — soft, white sand and warm, turquoise water. We had some days with seaweed and off weather, but the beaches days were always great. We packed the cooler and had a nice lunch under the canopy while we watched the boys play in the sand and water. They became best friends on the trip, and it was so fun watching these two little boys laugh and play together.

I’m so grateful for our ability to make a trip like this happen and to plan it with another family. It added a richness to the trip and an ability to get to know our friends on a deeper level. As you get older, the time you spend together with friends gets less and less, and it doesn’t feel common to do big trips together anymore. It really takes an effort on everyone’s part to plan it and make it happen, and I’m so glad we did. It’s a trip we will always remember, and I hope we have many more friend trips like this in our future.