Heading to Orange beach

Jon had to go to Orange Beach Alabama for a Union Conference.  Since the trip was paid for by the union, James and I tagged along.   Mom and Dad were nice enough to agree to watch the big kids for us, since they had school.  One Day one, we planned to get out by 7am, we actually left around 7:45, but returned home 15 min later when I realized that I brought literally nothing for the baby to do in the car for the 6 hour drive.  So we swung back around to Nana's house and grabbed her portable DVD player and some discs.  So we ended up getting on the road for real at about 8:15.  It was a long and uneventful drive down to the beach.  James was incredibly well behaved and either slept or watched movies the whole time.  The conference was scheduled to start at 1pm for those who could make it, and we arrived around 2:15 ish.  The hotel room wasn't ready to be check into yet, so James and I hopped into the pool while Jon headed to his meeting.  We weren't in the pool for long before Daddy showed up!  They had ended the day's meeting at about 3, so he came swimming with us until we could check in at 4.  After we checked into our hotel room and brought all out stuff up we changed and headed out to find some food and entertainment.  I had found a shopping/entertainment area online before we left called "The Wharf".  It had a Ferris wheel, restaurants and such.  I wanted to take James on the wheel, so we headed there first.  We walked around the Wharf for a while, we stopped in the Jerky store and bought some Kangaroo Jerky and a bottle of Muskadine Grape Juice.  We looked at the various restaurant choices and decided to try the Mexican place.  It was pretty good, Jon had the fish tacos and I had the loaded Nachos.  After dinner, we took James on the Ferris Wheel.  He LOVED it.  It was so cute watching him look down at the world and saying "Weeeeee" and we went around and around.  After our ride, he insisted that we watch it go around from the ground too.  After we tore him away from the wheel, we went and got some Gelato I got Salted Caramel and pistachio and Jon got Italian chocolate and  coconut.  They were all delicious, but coconut was my favorite.  When we finished, we were all a little bit tired.  We thought about taking James to see a movie, but I was beat from all the driving and stuff so we just went back to the hotel.  We put James down in bed, and then I fell asleep while we watched some TV.  We had a great first day!