Travel Series: Destin and Thomas' first Birthday

- December 06, 2017

My Happy Place: Destin, Florida

Moran Family Travel Series #2: Destin

After about a week of driving, we were ready to settle down in Destin, Florida. I LOVE Destin ya'll, absolutely love it. Luckily my friend Amanda has a condo there that she puts up on Air B&B and she let us stay there for the week of Thomas' birthday. I've mentioned it a billion times here before but I'm just going to keep doing it- my friends are amazing and I am so grateful for them. Amanda's condo is mostly toddler friendly except for the whole antique furniture thing! Fortunately her place escaped unscathed from the wrath of the Moran boys.

Our first stop in Florida was a really fun aquarium in Fort Walton Beach that started with an epic meltdown from a kid but I can't quite remember which kid it was. Pictures indicate Charles but it could have been both. Kids loved seeing the fish though and called every clown fish a nemo fish. Very toddler like. For Thomas' birthday I got him a smash cake at a bakery called Small Cakes. Thomas ate .01% of the cake and Charles and I ate the rest- it was so good! So good. Thomas was not a fan of the smash cake- the second that frosting hit his fingers he was upset. I have a lot of crying baby photos for Thomas' first birthday! We also had a party for him at a local restaurant and were fortunate enough to have friends nearby come to visit. Again- thank you military life! My dear friend Danele- who I met at our first assignment ten years ago in Tucson was stationed in Destin at the time and actually living in Amanda's Destin house (do I need to draw a chart here?). Liz worked for me in Virginia and she turned from co working to friend pretty quickly. Finally, Matt had a friend from his Captain school in Montgomery that was stationed nearby who game to the party. How lucky are we that we can still surround our little one on his birthday even though we're thousands of miles away from "home" and our families. This is when friends turn into family and the military lifestyle is so conducive to that.

It actually rained quite a bit while we were in Destin so when the sun peeped through the clouds we were quick to get to the beach. The boys loved the beach and the white sands of Destin paired with that beautiful turquoise blue made for some incredible beach days. There was one point when we were on the beach and saw the thunderstorms rolling in. We barely made it to the condo in time before the downpour came! At least it was warm? The biggest plus for us was the boys didn't eat the sand! Huge win as a parent.

My favorite day in Destin was when we went to Seaside. Did you know that's where they filmed The Truman Show? It's so beautiful over there, right off Hwy 30A. We got bikes (Matt got one to pull the boys) and rode around the small town. When we got hot, we pulled over at a beach, jumped in the water, then jumped back on the bike. The boys loved being pulled by dad, I loved not having to pull them. And the food trucks in the main square?!?! It was so hard to pick just one. Probably one of my favorite family days to date. It was simple and we didn't do anything over the top; just spent some quality time adventuring as a family.

After our Florida adventure we took significantly less time to get back up to Virginia. The only thing that we made sure to do was stop by the Pappadeaux near Atlanta (we took a different route north instead of up the coast). This drive was slightly more challenging since we didn't break it up with fun cities to explore; however, again, when looking back on Summer 2016 Road Trip- we don't think about the challenges we faced, we just remember having a really awesome family vacation.