Beach Bums!

As promised, here's another update on our summer fun...our trip to Panama City Beach (PCB), FL. Luckily for us, my dad and stepmom bought a townhouse at the beach and hurried to have it ready for our arrival in mid-July. We drove down...what an adventure that was...and arrived ready to have fun. On the way down we stopped for gas at 11:30 p.m., 3 kids and a dog in the truck, and when David went to start it up again all we got was this CLICK, CLICK, CLICK....a DEAD BATTERY!!! Of course the first words out of my hubby's mouth were "I KNEW you needed a new battery!" As you can imagine, that didn't make the situation any better. We got a jump, stopped at the next exit to get a new battery at the 24-hour Walmart and were on our way again. What a mess!

While in PCB we went to the beach 4 times (the water is amazingly beautiful there), went to the pool everyday, David & I got to play golf twice (thanks Dad & Lisa for babysitting), played mini-golf twice, ate WAY too much (he he) and got some good quality time with my nephews Chase & Braden.

Our first day on the beach - with Lisa

Dinner at the Treasure Ship

Surfin' the waves - boy did they have fun doing that!

Sadly enough, this is the only family shot we got all week!

One of the best parts of our trip was our day on the Sea Dragon...a Pirate Ship cruise.


Chase, Alyssa & Braden headed for the pirate ship


The Sea Dragon Pirate Ship

The 5 of us were joined by my stepmom Lisa, Braden & Chase for a 2-hour cruise. Boy did they keep those kids busy! They had the boys swab the deck (mop), they all got their faces painted (well not Chase - he didn't think that was so cool!), they read them a pirate story, went hunting for a treasure, got to enjoy the treasure, played limbo, danced with tamborines, and the best part....a real, live water gun fight with another boat. It was hysterical and those kids were drenched when it was over :-)

My lil pirate...swabbing the deck

Braden

Arrggh!

Another fun day was spent at Gulf World where we got to enjoy a dolphin show, sea lion show, and a reptile show. Here is my crazy daughter McKenna holding a Columbian Python. GROSS! She does not get her love for animals from her mommy that's for sure! And yes, he is real!

FORE! An evening of mini-golf

All in all, our time in PCB went by extremely too fast, but we filled every moment with fun things that given us memories to last a lifetime. My kids are still talking about Pop Pop & Lisa's beach house! They can't wait to go back...and neither can I :-)

Alyssa enjoying the weather at dinner - I love this pic!

Chase & McKenna

After we left PCB we headed to my dad's house in Tallahassee for a few days where I got to meet my beautiful niece Madelyn (aka Maddie). I spent hours holding her (no it didn't make me want another one!!) and we got to see my grandma too.

Madelyn Grace

Pop Pop, Lisa and all the grandkids. This was the best shot we could get!

When we left FL we were KID FREE -woo hoo!!! Thanks again Dad & Lisa for keeping the kids - they had such a good time.

David I headed home alone and took a short pitstop in Lake Norman, NC - outside Charlotte. We spent 2 days there golfing and house hunting....we think we've found our future home, but when is the 10 million dollar question!

As always, vacations come to an end way too fast and before we knew it we were back in Simpsonville (what I call where we live) and headed back to work....but we did manage to get in TONS and TONS of golf while the kids were gone. More on that later...