Mom came for her summer visit with us at the beginning of August which was perfect. It gave her some time alone with the kids and Dan and I the opportunity to get away to Sarasota for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. When Dan and I returned, he had to go out of town for work but Mom, the kids and I had some fun around St. Augustine. At the beginning of the week Emory was still in marine science camp so it was just the girls. One of our first outings was to the Lightner Museum.
We saw some beautiful antiques, had fun finding the answers to questions on a scavenger hunt in the museum and fed the koi fish in the ponds outside of the museum.
There were lots of koi and they were beautiful colors of orange, white and even black.
On our way home from the museum, we stopped for frozen hot chocolate (mmm!) at a local chocolatier. When we went in they were just getting ready to start another tour of the chocolate factory so we decided to stay. Before we could begin we all had to put on hair nets...and were immediately all transformed into lunch ladies!
It was neat to see inside the factory and learn how they make all of their chocolate specialties.
The chocolate sea shells are their signature piece of chocolate and well all enjoyed the samples too!
At the beginning of the tour we watched a short video clip of an I Love Lucy show where Lucy was working at a chocolate factory wrapping chocolates as they came down the conveyor belt. In true Lucy fashion, it did not go well. At they end of our tour, Whetstone had a wax Lucy on loan from the wax museum just down the street. Lucy was all ready for a quick photo op.
Later in the week when Emory was finished with camp, the three of us drove up to Jekyll Island in hopes of finding some sand dollars on the sand bar this time. Our first stop on Jekyll Island was at Driftwood Beach. A beach with huge, full size driftwood trees covering it. It's the perfect spot to stop for a few pictures.
Emory loves climbing to the top of the trees but unfortunately forgot to bring good climbing shoes on this day. The flip flops were definitely holding him back.
It got hot very quickly so we headed down to the beach where the sand bar should be. The tide was almost all the way out and people were already walking out on it looking for sand dollars. We headed out and before too long Emory had stepped on one and found the first sand dollar of the day. We quickly realized that it was easiest to find them by just dragging your hand across the top of the sand.
In less than an hour we had a whole bucket full!
Emory and Ellie played in the water for a while and were just silly and then we headed off for a great seafood dinner. It was the perfect first visit to Jekyll Island for Ga.
