5 on Friday

I'm linking up with the ladies above for another edition of 5 on Friday!

1.) I'm loving this picture of Jackson that I took at the beach while we were in Gulf Shores. We did a mini photo shoot on Thursday evening and although I had high hopes for wonderful beach pictures, Jackson just wasn't in the mood. The lighting was fabulous that evening and the scenery was amazing, but he just didn't care about any of that. I did get a few that I like though, so I guess it wasn't a total wash. I'll share the rest when I get to my Day 6 of our Gulf Shores Vacation post. (If you've missed days 1, 2 and 3, be sure and check them out.)

2.) I really want to make a "Family Travels Wall Map" similar to this one, to hang somewhere in our house and add stick pins to all the places we've traveled as a couple and as a family! I found the map below online and really liked the blue colors. Now I just need to get it printed and framed. :-)

3.) I just read this post, Grace for the Working Mother and Her Guilt. Another blogger had posted about it and after reading it, I knew I wanted to share it too. Its such an encouragement to the working mom.

She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family.
Proverbs 31:15
- See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/01/grace-for-the-working-mother-and-her-guilt/#sthash.d4bRAPVx.dpuf

4.) I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Jake and I and his Brother and Sister-In-Law, have recently taken over the responsibilities as youth leaders of our church. Tonight we have a lock-in scheduled for the youth group. I think the last time I stayed up all night was when I was in labor with Jackson, and I can't even remember when I stayed up all night before that. I'm a 7+ hours a night kinda girl and love my sleep. This is going to be challenging. Bring on the 5 hour energy drinks cause I'm gonna need them!!

5.) Earlier in the week, I received an e-mail from a woman named Heather who is a wife, mother, and a Mesothelioma survivor. She contacted me to see if she could tell her story through a video on my blog, to help raise awareness for Mesothelioma. I said sure! Please take a moment and watch this short video.

I'm also linking up here:

Throw-back Thursday: Swimming with Dolphins in 2000

Welcome back to another week of Throw-back Thursday! 

<a href="http://www.asmithstory.com/search/label/Throw-back%20Thursdays"><img src="http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/AmyRS81/Throw-backThursdaysLink-UpButton_zpse60f6ee6.jpg" alt="button" width="250" height="250" /></a>

After our dolphin cruise in Gulf Shores a couple weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to share a picture from when I swam with dolphins back in 2000. My BFF Carley graduated from high school that year, and her mom took her and I on a trip to Disney World as a gift to her for graduation! It was an amazing trip! 

One of the things we did while in Orlando, was visit Discovery Cove. It was by far, one of the coolest places I've ever been! They had pools to swim with Sting Ray, Tropical Fish, and places to feed Tropical Birds. They also had a separate area where you could swim with Dolphins! 

Since I was a young girl, dolphins have been my favorite animal. (I even have 2 dolphins tattooed on my back. You can read about that here.) Here in the mid-west, we don't get to see dolphins, so this was my first experience ever even seeing them in person. To say I was excited would have been an understatement. I may or may not have shed a tear or 2 of excitement when I first saw them swimming in the water! It was an experience I will never forget and hope to someday do again. 

We were able to ride on their back, dance with them, watch them eat and do tricks and we even got to give them a kiss. ♥

Now it's your turn! Do you have any old pictures from your past that you'd like to share? I'd love for you to link up with me and add the button above to your #tbt post!

Project Life 2013: Week 32

Week 32 was the week we were on vacation in Gulf Shores, AL. There were just far too many pictures for me to put on 1 page. So I decided to make a 4 page spread for this week. :-)

Page 1: Sunday

Page 2: Monday and Tuesday

Page 3: Wednesday and Thursday

Page 4: Friday and Saturday

I used several kits, so if you have a question about something I used, feel free to ask. :-)

Day 3 of our Gulf Shores, Alabama Family Vacation

If you missed the previous days of our Gulf Shores vacation, you can check out day one here and day two here.

Monday was our third day and we spent a majority of the day hanging out at the condo, pool and beach. 

Every morning at around 10 o'clock, the blue angels would fly along the coastline. Jackson, had a love/hate relationship with them. He loved seeing them fly by, but he hated the loud noise they made.

While sitting out on the balcony this day, I got a few pictures of some of the beach houses for rent across the courtyard. They are pretty cool to see. 

Later that evening we headed to Orange Beach to take a Sunset Dolphin Cruise. This was the one activity I was looking the most forward to. I just love dolphins! They are so playful and fun, and oh so cute!

We were instructed to get there around 30 minutes early, which isn't always fun when you have to try and entertain a toddler around water. But we did our best. 

While we were waiting on the dock, we spotted this guy. So cool, I had to get a picture!

I was so excited about this being Jackson's first boat ride. He, on the other hand, wasn't all that impressed. I think he liked it at first, but then got a little bored. He did pretty well for the most part though.

The way this dolphin cruise works is that 2 boats go out. Both boats go in different directions searching for dolphins. When one boat spots them, the other boat will join them and they will take off together, creating a wave in between the back of the 2 boats. The dolphins love it and jump and play in the wave. They call it "surfing the dolphins". It was great! We were out in the bay for about an hour and a half and we surfed dolphins around 5 times! We saw lots of dolphins!

Here's a picture of the other boat, heading out with us. 

Spotting a dolphin!

Surfing dolphins.

When we weren't surfing any dolphins, the boat was moving fairly slow because they were searching for them. This was when Jackson got bored. So Jake took him up on the top of the boat so he could see the water better.

More dolphins!

They had a little well on the boat for the kids to catch fish. So Jake helped Jackson catch a few. :-)

 My parents with Jackson on the dolphin cruise.

 We were on the sunset cruise, so I snapped a picture of the pretty sunset. :-)

After our cruise. We had dinner at a restaurant called Tacky Jacks

See all the tape with writing all over it on the pillars? That's why they call it Tacky Jack's. You write your name and a message on there and leave it taped to something in the restaurant. Unfortunately, we forgot to do this, but it was pretty cool.

And that was the end of another great day in Gulf Shores! :-)

A Little 5 on Friday Fun

Yay for Friday! It feels good to almost have this first full week back from vacation behind me. :-)

I'm happy to be linking up with 5 on Friday again this week! I thought I'd share 5 really cool places that we visited while on our Gulf Shores Family Vacation last week! (I'll be sharing these activities in more detail in my days 3-8 posts coming up next week.)

First and foremost was the Dolphin Cruise we took Monday night. Dolphins are by far my favorite animal. I swam with dolphins back in 2000 and it was such an awesome experience. This cruise was great because we were guaranteed to see dolphins and it did not disappoint.

Second was Zip-lining! Jake and I Zip-lined on Wed. morning while my parents hung out with Jackson at the condo/pool. We zip-lined at Gulf State Park and it was amazing. There were 7 lines that we zipped down. It was cool because once you were on the first tower, you zipped straight from tower to tower until we were finished. The last line was a double line, so Jake and I got to race. Unfortunately he won. Ha.

Third is Alligator Alley. Alligator Alley is a huge Alligator Farm where they have over 200 rescued alligators that live in a natural environment. Lots and lots of swampy areas for them to live happily. It was really cool to see. Jackson got to hold a baby alligator. He was not afraid at all. :-) The second picture is of "Captain Crunch" their largest gator.

Fourth was visiting the USS Alabama in Mobile, AL. It was very fascinating to see the huge battleship up close and personal.

Fifth was touring Fort Morgan. Jake loves learning about the Civil War, so this was right up his alley. It was super hot that day and a lot of it was outside, so we didn't spend as much time there as we would have liked, but it was very interesting.

I'm also linking up here: 

Day 2 of our Gulf Shores, Alabama Family Vacation

I'm going to skip "Throwback Thursday" this week and continue on with Day 2 of our Gulf Shores vacation. We'll pick up on #tbt next week! :-)

If you missed Day 1, you can catch up here.

Day 2 of our trip, we woke up and headed out to Wal-Mart to get some groceries and necessities for the week. But before heading out, I got a few pictures of the condo.

The condo was perfect. The perfect size and it was in the perfect location.

Wal-Mart was jammed!! It was not a fun trip and it lasted WAY TOO LONG! Jackson usually does pretty well at the store, but it was just taking way too long, so I ended up getting him down and letting him run around for a little while. I took him back to the toy section to play with some toys while we waited. I snapped this picture while we were back there. :-)

Once we got back to the condo and had lunch, we put Jackson down for a nap and just relaxed a little.

Once Jackson got up from his nap, we headed down to the beach.

This is a picture from our condo balcony. The beach was just a short walk, which was wonderful!

Jackson wasn't overly impressed with the beach. He enjoyed playing in the sand a little bit, but didn't love the ocean. There were times when we'd ask him if he wanted to go to the beach and he'd say "nah". LOL.

My Dad and Jake in the water!

After spending some time at the beach, we decided to go spend some time in the pool before dinner.

Jackson LOVED the pool!!!

While we were at the pool, I snapped this picture so you could see our condo from the outside. Ours was the one in the lower right hand side with the lime green chairs. :-)

As you can see from the picture above, it was starting to get dark and a storm was blowing in. So we headed back up to the condo to fix dinner. We also watched the storm roll in from the balcony. It was a pretty wicked storm with lots of lightening and some VERY loud thunder!

Thankfully the storm didn't last long and we had a great rest of the evening and a great first full day of vacation (minus the trip to Wal-mart).

Linking up here: