The shortest vacation ever

For Michael's birthday, we decided to go to the beach and combine it with our 'vacation'. I use that term loosely because it was short to begin with, and we ended up leaving a night early. We planned on staying three nights, but then we got a call from the baby wrangler/agent/hobby lobby lady wanting Avery and I both to be at a photo shoot Wednesday morning, the same day we planned on returning anyway.

Since it pays really well, we decided to just load up the car and drive home after dinner while Avery slept. I don't think we would have wanted to spend an entire week at the beach with a toddler, but maybe four nights would have been great! Nonetheless, we still made memories and took tons of pictures.

This was the first day we went to the beach. We got out there really early, like 9:30 a.m., because I figured that's what families did with small children. At least that's what I've seen people do when I used to go before Avery. She loved crawling and standing on the beach chairs.

Daddy tried playing ball with her, but the wind kept carrying the ball away, which meant he just ran up and down the beach while Avery watched.

I love this picture with Michael in the background.
More climbing...
Daddy's little parrot. He holds her like this all the time at home.

After playing in the water and with the ball, it was time to play in the sand.

She didn't seem to mind getting buried. It probably felt cool since it was so hot.

Just chillin'...
Even the baby doll was getting some rays. Actually, we put her there so Avery wouldn't drag her through the sand.

It was time to cool off in the kiddy pool. It was 1 foot deep, so Avery didn't have any trouble wading on her own. She walked all over that little pool, with one of us trailing behind the whole time....

...just in case something like this happened!

The sun must have started to get to Avery...

...because she napped for nearly three hours when we got back!