PCB 2011

Last week we ventured east and went on a nice family vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida. Our friends Heather and Bob and Keith and Cathy invited us to join them at Heather's brother's beach house for a nice, long weekend. We ventured out Wednesday night in hopes to get there bright and early the Thursday morning. I never thought I'd be the one to enjoy driving thru the night, but it really worked for us. First, we did it on the way to Omaha, and now to PCB. We left our house around 7-ish, stopped for dinner in Winnie and seemed to make it to Baton Rouge in no time.

The kids fell asleep around 10 and we didn't hear a peep until Jackson woke up just in time to go thru the tunnel in Mobile, AL. He quickly fell back asleep and didn't wake up until we stopped for a quick pitstop in Destin. We arrived in PCB around 5:30 in the morning and the kids and I made our way to our bedroom for a quick nap before we started the day. The kids were too excited to sleep, so I sent them out of the room with their Daddy while I slept an hour or so.

The house we stayed at had its own pool, so we started our day there. After Keith and Cathy showed up, the girls headed to the grocery store for breakfast stuff, snacks, etc. The boys took the kids to the beach. The beach is just beautiful there. White sand, clear water... a far cry than what we see in Galveston. There was seaweed in the water, though, so the kids weren't too crazy about that. After the beach, we headed to a nice restaurant and then turned in. Kenny and I (me mostly) were still tired from the drive.

Friday the boys went and played golf in the morning. The mommies and kids swam. This was the first time my kids met the LB and G. For just meeting, all 4 hit it off great. Jordan loved having little girls to play with. And Jackson would play with the girls, and then get tired of the "girly" stuff and go off and do something by himself. Friday afternoon, the big girls went and had some mommy time. We shopped for a while and then met up with the others at a restaurant for dinner. After dinner we played mini-golf. We had been promising Jackson all day that we would take him to play. He loved it! And if you ask him, he'll insist that he beat Mr. Keith.




Saturday we headed out early and went on a boat ride out to Shell Island. Here are the kids on the boatride there.


The boys fed the seagulls Chee-tos on the way.

It's called Shell Island because, well, people find lots of shells there. You won't find them just walking down the beach, though. We sat in the water and dug a little under the sand and found a ton of really nice shells and sand dollars. We were hoping to find some starfish, but no such luck. There are two alligators that have taken residence there by the boat dock. This guy was our welcoming committee.

Here we are enjoying the beautiful beach.

On the boat ride back from Shell Island, we spotted a few dolphins. One was by himself. Here he is splashing his tail at us.


And here's and mommy and baby dolphin. They're hard to see. I couldn't get a good picture, but it was super cute.

On the drive back, the kids were given a chance to drive the boat. It took some coaxing, but Jackson finnaly did it.

That afternoon we swam for a while and then we headed to Pier Park. We ate an early dinner, and then the kids rode some carnival rides. All of the rides were refurbished from an old amusement park in Panama City. The kids had a ball. Mr. Keith rode the airplanes with Jackson, but we could never get their attention to look at the camera.




Sunday morning everyone packed up to head home. I'll admit that I wish we could've stayed at least one more day. We don't get to see our friends very often at all and we had so much fun spending time with them.