Heyyyyy friends! We just made it back home from a one-week vacation at the beach. This is Vivienne’s second family-beach trip. Now that she is two years old and we’ve done this a few times, we have a better grip on what crap we need/don’t need to lug back and forth on the beach. SO while it is fresh on my mind, I’m writing down all the things that we’re helpful/needed to us while we were on the beach.

*Note: we had a total of 8 adults and 3 kids, so adjust this as you need 🙂 ALSO worth mentioning that 2 men did the majority of the heavy lifting/carrying/pulling back and forth.

1. Beach Tent: If you live in the south then you’re familiar with canopy tents aka “tailgate tents”. We had two of these. Absolute life savers to keep all of us out of the sun. Two tents gave us plenty of room for beach chairs, blankets, coolers, beach bags, etc etc. These have great reviews on Amazon as far as withstanding wind and being sturdy.
2. Beach Wagon: We had two wagons. One was stronger and more durable than the other. We used that one to carry out the tents, chairs, coolers, heavier things, etc. The other one we used to carry the rest of our stuff/bags. We definitely needed both.
3. Beach Chairs: one for every adult
4. Coolers: we had two that we took back and forth. One for beverages and one for lunches/snacks for everyone for the day. (For lunch, we rotated out sandwiches/wraps every day with a few bags of family-size chips and some fruit.)
5. Beach blanket mat: this was so helpful when Vivi got tired on the beach; she napped on this for a couple of hours every day we were out there. It fit fine under the tents and was shaded.
6. Puddle Jumper: she’s fearless at this age and wore these floaties basically every second we were around water.
7. Sunscreen: Spray sunscreens do NOT work for us! We use lotion. I used Think Baby on Vivi and I also had a Beautycounter face stick that we used. Brett and I used No-Ad SPF50 sport sunscreen.
8. Hats: Viv kept this on the whole time (even in the ocean). It’s $10 and has a strap on the bottom.
9. Beach towels: I had a personal beach bag that I carried two towels in (I don’t think you need to pack a towel for everyone; we could have gotten away with 1 towel.)
10. Bluetooth Speaker: My bro/sis in law used their JBL speaker and set it up in the top corner of one of the tents. It carried sound great and it’s waterproof; only had to charge it at night b/c it stays charged for up to 12 hours.
11. Portable chargers with cords: not necessary but streaming music can kill your phone battery
12. Giant float: totally not necessary, BUT I do think that it was great to have in the ocean and on the sand (for adults and kids) because you could fill it up with some water and sit in it.

And just remember, it doesn’t matter what you have or what you do, there will never be one solid family group photo, haha! Hope this was helpful! Comment below if you have any recommendations!