We all got up and loaded the car on Saturday morning. It was a quick hour's drive to Gulf Shores. C had been down to the fest and working since Thursday evening, so he had already found the condo and had checked us in before we arrived. So after dropping all our gear off at the room, we headed out to locate some lunch. Check out the views:
Given all the local options, we went with a tried and true favorite, The Original Oyster House, also known as the place where I fell in love...with key lime pie! We had a great table overlooking the bay and we all loaded up on super yummy food (yes, I got my shrimp fix-it was the Shrimp Fest of course!). Plus, we all made sure to save room for pie!
After filling our bellies, we went down to the beach to walk around the festival. Our first stop was the kids' area. Here the kids checked out the marine center's booth:
At the sheriff's station the kids got their hands painted, colored cool iron on shirts, a received awesome badges with their names and pictures.
Still at the kid's Village the kids danced in a dance party, did some arts and crafts, and got some more freebies. They were getting a bit warn out, so we decided to cruise through the rest of the festival's exhibits and vendors. after about an hour, C was getting worn out as well, so we decided to head back to the condo. But not before we made a quick stop at a beach store to see if they had any hermit crabs. You see, E had decided that she wanted to purchase a pet with all her birthday money. After much discussion, we as a family decided a hermit crab would be the animal best suited for us. She had been promised one the next time we were at the beach.
As we were entering the parking lot for the store, we were approached by a girl recruiting people to take a tour of a timeshare place. I'm not sure what made him decided to do it, but C agreed to have us all take a tour the next day. Maybe it was the lure of $100 when the 45 minute tour was over. Yeah, we'll see how that went, you'll be surprised.
Anyway, back to the crab... when confronted with all the assorted crabs, we some how got suckered into buying not just one crab but two! E picked one spunky one with a glittery butterfly painted on its shell and H found one with a funky car on its back. E named hers Rosie and H's was called Car or Crabby, depending on the moment.
When we got back to the condo, the kids taunted the creatures through the sides of the container while C supervised through his eyelids:
After the excitement of the crabs wore off, we changed into our suits and went down to the pool. C was funny and thought that he was going to read his book while the kids swam, yeah, right buddy, you're on daddy duty today!
When everyone had had enough pool time, we went to the room and changed for dinner. We ended up eating at a little Mexican place around the corner. C and I both order some combo platter that apparently consisted of every other menu item. I think we each had 3 plates full of food! H ate his dinner in record time. I was quite impressed, but soon realized, he ate so quickly just so that he could close his eyes. I looked over at the little guy and his eyes began to roll up into the top of his head! I warned C to grab him before his head smacked the table and he set him down across the bench with his head in C's lap. The poor guy was beyond exhausted and slept(and snored loudly) while the rest of us finished our meals.
Obviously, we weren't going to do anything else this evening, so we went back to the condo. C helped me get the kids in their jammies before heading out to "work" for a couple hours. H went right back to sleep while E and I stayed up and watched some Food Network Challenge before lights out.
The next morning, we packed up out stuff and loaded it all up in the car. We then walked over to the festival. The kids did the kids area again and we grabbed a yummy BBQ lunch at the VIP tent.
Before we left town, we had one more stop-the timeshare presentation. C and I were both a bit apprehensive about listening to the spiel and formulated our escape plan. We figured with two tired kids, it wouldn't be too hard to get the timeshare people to ask us to leave. As it turned out, no plan was needed. We check ourselves in and waited about 3 minutes while two other couples joined us. We were all taken to a little conference room where the agent informed us that they didn't have any condos left to sell us and unless we wanted to purchase a resale unit, we were all welcome to leave. That was it! Less then 5 minutes later, we collected our $100 cash and we were on the road. We weren't sure what exactly had happened, but whatever, can't complain!
It was a nice mini-vacation...thank you MBCO for our accommodations (and not making C work too much) and thank you timeshare place for our spending money!
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