Joanna Gaines is soaking in all the family time she can get! The former HGTV star, 44, and her husband Chip Gaines, 47, took their five kids — Drake, 18, Ella, 15, Duke, 14, Emmie Kay 12, and Crew, 4 — on a picturesque beach getaway over the weekend, which Joanna documented thoroughly on her Instagram page. Her first post came on Aug. 12 in the form of a video and showed her rocking a pair of distressed daisy dukes and a gray tank as she played beach volleyball with her kids. The sweet video showed little Crew hitting the ball with his best effort, although the ball missed going over the net by the slightest bit of height. “Soaking up the last few days of summer,” she captioned the heartwarming post.
The next post also featured her little one being absolutely adorable as he walked along the calm shoreline. As he strolled through the water, he cutely repeated, “Thank you waves.” Joanna asked him why he was thanking the waves, to which he replied, “The waves are washing our feet.”
The talented cookbook author and bakery owner also shared several snaps on her Instagram Story. In one of the photos she posted, which can be seen in the slideshow below, she posed next to Crew, who was climbing up the side of a rocky trail. “I’m more of a ‘lay on the beach-er’ than a hiker. This boy can walk and climb for hours…” she captioned it. In others, Crew could be seen wearing a snorkel mask and playing in the water with one of his older sisters. Joanna also posted a photo of herself posing with what looks like dried-out fan coral.
Another sweet snapshot showed all five of her kids spread out around a dock that houses a large sailboat. Chip could be seen walking toward the end of the dock in blue jeans and a blue tee.
Joanna, who is busy running the Magnolia Network, a bustling Silos bakery and bed and breakfast center in Waco, a magazine titled The Magnolia Journal, and so much more alongside Chip, is releasing her first solo book in November called The Stories We Tell. “Earlier this year I started jotting down memories and stories from my past, journaling about things I was still, years later, trying to work through. Half of my life is behind me and I’ve been longing for clarity about what I should carry forward and how I could hold this next chapter well,” she began in a post on Instagram about her upcoming project. “At some point, I realized I was writing a story—my story. The bits and pieces that shape who I am. It was messy and winding and beautiful, and graciously revealed about a million wonders. Some of it broke my heart—and some of it pieced it back together.”
It seems like the beach trip was the perfect getaway to celebrate summertime and relax before Joanna’s exciting new book hits the shelves.