After how stressful, odd, unfortunate, sad, frustrating, etc. this year has been, we decided on a whim to take a family vacation. At first we were looking at Airbnb’s in and near Ocean City, Maryland, but the rates were way too high for our budget. We thought of a few other places down south and finally landed on Cocoa Beach, Florida. Brandon had visited this area years ago, but the rest of our family hadn’t yet been there.

After working a wedding day on July 11th, we packed the majority of our belongings during the week so that we didn’t have much to do before we left that same night. We ended up loading up the truck and heading out at 10:30PM. Our kids were too excited to go to sleep, so they stayed up for a couple hours. Brandon was the main driver for our travels down to Florida. We ended up having to stop quite a few times to rest and go to the bathroom. 17+ hours later, we had a safe trip down.

We arrived at our cottage just before 4:00PM on Sunday, July 12th. It was a hot one, and the air conditioning inside felt wonderful! We unloaded the truck, our kids, and our dog, Harley, and we made ourselves at home.

The cottage we rented through Airbnb was super clean, cozy and had everything we needed for our week long stay. We ended up hanging out on the porch out back, relaxing on the hammock, and going to the beach that was within walking distance every day. We ventured around the town a couple days, but made sure to stay to ourselves and maintain social distancing. It was practically a ghost town. The beaches weren’t packed, which was super nice. It was a different vacation with not being able to explore more, eat inside restaurants, go shopping, and all the other fun things you get to do. But, we had a wonderful time relaxing and being near the beach. What more could you need?

7/12/20
The night of our arrival we checked out the beach. The water was warm and the view was just gorgeous. We ordered supper from Slow & Low BBQ thanks to Tracey’s cravings. The food was just okay, but we didn’t mind because we were starving!

7/13/20 & 7/14/20
We spent these days at the beach! We had sunshine for practically all of our stay; it only rained briefly one or two days.

7/15/20
Another beach day and exploring the town of Cocoa Beach. We bought subs for lunch from the market and ate back at the cottage. We also checked out the skate park that Sophie wanted to go to. It was filled with tons of older skater dudes who thankfully stayed out of Sophie’s way so that she could skate down the ramp. They didn’t have the nicest language, so we didn’t stay long. LOL!

7/16/20
You guessed it; another day at the beach! We also made it to see the sunrise at 6:30AM, but a huge storm cloud blocked most of our view. It was still pretty!

7/17/20
Our last full day in Florida and we spent it at the beach. Not the whole day, though. The girls were tired, so it was only Brandon, Tracey & Kipton. Later that evening we ordered pizza and went to The Fat Donkey to get some yummy ice cream.

7/18/20
We sadly loaded up the truck and departed the cottage at 6:00AM. We had such a great vacation at the beach, and we can’t wait to go back again in the future! We are so thankful for the memories we have from this trip.

Enjoy browsing a mixture of iPhone photos and photos from Tracey’s pro camera of our 2020 Family Vacation!
Truly Lemonades are the bomb! Thanks to our old neighbor and friend, Hannah, for recommending them! This girl does NOT like the beach, the heat, or the summer. She preferred to stay at the cottage for the most part. Thanks to Briana for taking some headshots! And thanks to Kipton for taking headshots of us together! We have a couple of awesome photographers-in-training.