Daytona Beach and Lighthouse

 Guy and I love exploring the places we live (I think I get that from my Dad). And Florida is sooo much fun to explore because there is so much to do here.  We have a huge list of all the places we want to go while we are living here, since we know it won't be forever. Slowly we are crossing them off our list and it has been so great.  Most of the things on there are beaches we want to see, but we LOVE going to the beach so I'm happy. I love searching for seashells with the boys to remember our day and getting sand from each one for my sand collection. Plus hello, the beach is FREE and it's a place you relax the whole time! We like that :) We've made it a goal to do all the work we need to do around the house and stuff during the week so on weekends we can just play as a family and it's been really nice.  It also helps that we are just renting so it's not like we have a lot of home improvement projects going on!

The cool thing about Florida, to us, is it is so long and skinny. We're not used to that since Texas was just so huge in every direction! Tampa is right by the Gulf of Mexico, but it only takes us about 3 hours to get to the other side to the Atlantic Ocean. So, we thought we'd cross Daytona Beach off our list and see how we liked it. I've heard Daytona is a big spring break location, but the middle of May was a great time to go with a family. We hung out on the boardwalk in the evening and enjoyed it. It was kind of cloudy and sort of chilly, but it felt like heaven.  One more reason I love the ocean, you get that breeze by it!

 The boys had fun playing with Tyler's blanket in the wind. We keep forgetting our kite....we really need to just keep it in our trunk!

 We drove into the Daytona Speedway parking lot to check it out. Seriously it was SO huge and Brayden was going crazy cause he wanted to go inside and see what it was like.....he is way into race cars at this age.  We are definitely not big Nascar people, but it would be fun to take Brayden to if we could ever find cheap tickets.  I'm sure we'd see some interesting people in there :)

It was so cloudy in the morning, we thought for sure it was going to rain. But we lucked out and the sun decided to come out.  Gotta love the sunshine state....the sun always wins!

Off of Daytona Beach there is a lighthouse that we thought would be fun to check out. It has been there since 1887 and it was actually really cool. I'm so glad we decided to do it because it is definitely something we'll remember.

 202 winding steps to the top! It was a sad reality to how out of shape I really have become. Yikes, I better start running again or something!

Guy carried Tyler the whole way up and Brayden was able to do it all by himself. He must be 5 :)

                             

Going up.....

Peek-a-boo!

Oh but it was SOO worth it for the view of Daytona Beach. It was gorgeous up there and we could see so far up and down the coast.

I love it here! How could you ever have a bad day if you woke up to this every morning!

It was super windy up there, but we managed to not blow away!

Such a long way down. I was a little worried because it was kind of steep for the kids, but Brayden made it like a pro. And Guy managed to not drop Tyler and I managed to not trip over my clumsy feet so  that was a good thing :)

It was actually really cool to learn about the history of the lighthouse over the years and we were able to walk through the cabins of people who used to run it back in the day.

After the lighthouse, we spent the rest of our day at the beach. And I must say that Daytona beach is wonderful.  I think the trick is to go further down the beach, not by the boardwalk, and it's hardly crowded at all. We really had a whole section of the beach to ourself and that made it fun.

We found quite a few sand dollars, but never one that wasn't broken. We'll have to keep searching for one of those.

It was really fun to be in the Atlantic Ocean with all the waves. The Gulf of Mexico has no waves so it was a fun treat and Brayden spent forever trying to jump over them. It was cute! There were a few guys surfing by us that were really good so it was fun to watch.

And lets be honest, it wouldn't be a trip to the beach, or anywhere really, without a few moments like this from Tyler :)

It was low tide so the sand was all wet where we were sitting. Perfect for sandcastles and writing your name in the sand!

And Tyler was being so cute on top of his sand pile.  It was pretty small really, but he would run up and down it like he thought it was a huge mountain. Funny boy!

So Daytona Beach made it on our "yes list" of a place we would go to again.  Thanks Guy for planning this little excursion and for making it so fun for us!