I've got a little sand in my pocket...

... two weeks after I left the beach! Is there anything better than that?!

Well, one thing that's just as good is looking back at your photos from the beach. And here are some:

Emilyn and Allen would like to welcome you to our fancy beach home. Here, they are lounging on our balcony. OK, it's not our balcony. Some kind folks just rent it to us for the week. But we get a king-size bed, Emilyn gets a queen and her own bathroom, and we eat nothing but seafood, pizza and microwave popcorn. Needless to say, we hate coming home.

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Here's the reason we ever went to the Gulf Coast in the first place... The Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola -- Daddy's second-favorite airplane museum! Here, Emilyn and Allen are at the controls of a helicopter. Scary! No, they have a room full of cockpits that kids can climb in. They love it!

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Stunt professional. Closed course. Do not attempt.

It's never a good idea to actually put your baby in a jet intake.

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Daddy and Allen at the beach, with Emilyn testing the surf in the background. Beautiful water. There's a reason they call it "the Emerald Coast." Emilyn calls the ocean "Kerploosh, the Sea Dog." She feeds him sand biscuits that he laps at with his wave tongue. This year, Emilyn said Kerploosh was angry because "Mrs. Kerploosh dumped him." Interesting! A girl and the sea.

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One new thing we got to do this year was take the ferry to Dauphin Island. That's a neat place, with a cool aquarium. But it's darn tough to find food on that island. There's one restaurant, all the way over by the causeway bridge to Mobile. So, my advice: Eat before you get to Dauphin.

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Emilyn and Allen are sitting in the grassy area just under our balcony... This year, the grass and trees were in, and the pool was open. The elevator worked! I guess it took about a year to get back to tiptop shape after nasty Hurricane Ivan. This year, instead of piles of rubble everywhere, there were nice empty sand lots with "For Sale" signs. "For Sale. $3.5 million." Yeah! Let me get my checkbook.

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Here's Allen, trying hard to eat some sand while I take the picture. I put him down in the wet stuff so he couldn't get so many grains into his little cracks. He really didn't spend too much time at the beach, though. He preferred sleeping with Grammy Shark and Grammy Fishy.

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Emilyn fed the seagulls every morning. Allen usually watched and listened, before he went back inside for his mid-morning nap.

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Thanks for coming along with us on our trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama! We'll see the seagulls, Kerploosh and all the rest next year.