Gulf Shores Family Vacation Day 6: National Naval Aviation Museum, beach & Live Bait

We started our day by taking the boys to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. I highly recommend this place to everyone and its 100% FREE. On our way there we realized as we crossed the state line from Alabama into Florida that it was both boys first time to Florida. In the perfect life I would have a cute little photo below of my boys standing by the welcome to the sunshine state sign. However this is real life and I was probably ducking from flying sippy cups or snacks while trying to change the DVD at that moment. Either way it was still a first for both my boys.

It was also Brad and my first time on a military base which was pretty cool-(side note the water there was amazing-crystal clear). When you arrive at the museum this is the first plane you see.
The plane above would be cool enough for me, but you walk in and there are tons of planes and helicopters hanging from the ceilings and walls. Along with full size planes parked all over the hanger. They also have different parts of planes that you can view.

Not only do they have these planes for you to look at but there are many of them that you can actually get inside of (not just adults, but kids can too).

They also have a really cool indoor play ground for the kiddos that is all aviation related. Did I mention that it is all in the AC and FREE!

You can walk (or run around if you are Hudson) and explore the whole place.

The museum is actually 2 stories-but we only really explored the 1st floor (unless you count when Austin ran upstairs and I had to run through the whole 2nd floor to catch him).

Austin is inside of one of the planes acting like he is flying it!

They also had a big outdoor area with more planes that you could walk and see or ride a bus around. But we did not get to see those because our boys were wiped out after just tackling the 1st floor.

Once we got back to the condo we all changed and headed for the beach.

For those of you who have read each of the post on our vacation and are wondering "were you really there Michelle?" Yes I was there, I was just normally the one behind the camera.

Brad and I (seven years in marriage and 11 years together)

After the beach and naps we got ready and headed to dinner in Orange Beach at Live Bait. Yes my kids are eating ice cream again before dinner-don't judge. What ever it takes for us to have a meal in peace while on vacation!

Austin started wanting to play funny faces while we were on our trip (not sure where he got that game from?). Here are Brad and Austin making funny shark faces.

I really wanted us to go down to the beach and take some photos after dinner since the boys both looked so cute. But they were not wanting any part of it. We also decided that today would be our last day at the beach so I started packing to go home.

We really had a great trip! We were a little worried about taking both boys alone on vacation but it turned out really good. Austin was so good and handled it very well when we had to leave some where that he liked because Hudson was not happy. We were surprised that we were able to actually take the boys to see some different things other than just the beach while we were here. Austin is getting to the age where he is starting to remember things so hopefully this will be the first of many family vacations that he will remember.