Beach Vacation!

The day after Craig returned from Philadelphia, we got up as early as I could manage and finished loading the car and drove.  And drove.  And drove.  ...To Florida!!!

Jacksonville, to be specific.  We met up with our friends the Minsters (whose kids have gotten SO BIG!!!-- we hadn't seen them in four years!) before finally checking into our hotel.

The next morning we barely managed to get to church, and then kept driving until we got to Panama City where we were having a beach vacation with all of Craig's family!  Craig's parents were sharing a condo on the 15th floor with us and it made for QUITE the view!

Naturally, the second we ran down onto the beach, a huge storm blew over us.  It was a little cold, but a lot awesome.  And it cleared the beach of all those people, too!  It even blew away a few of their pop-ups!

It was gone about as fast as it had arrived, and then we enjoyed jumping in the waves for a bit before deciding to try and find some dinner.  Craig was desperate to eat at a restaurant on the beach called Pineapple Willy's (Craig loves eating outside, preferably with water to look at).  Unfortunately Pineapple Willy's is a very popular spot.  After waiting two hours for a table, everyone was in full on meltdown mode, but none so bad as Ryder.  And then he realized that there was nothing vegetarian on the menu and it got reeeeeally ugly.  Fortunately the waitress managed to convince someone to make him a grilled cheese sandwich and she got all our food to us in about five minutes.  So we waited two hours and probably sat at our table for 20 minutes.  Ah, well.  We try!

Loving it at Pineapple Willy's

Once the kids were all in bed, Craig headed to Wal-Mart to get us some food to have on hand at the condo.  It turned out to be the saddest shopping experience of Craig's life.

What is this, Russia?

The next day we went straight to the beach, while Craig's parents went to pick up the Houston contingent, who were staying at a nearby RV Park and had arrived late in the night.  As is always the case, the kids loved the beach.  Absolutely loved it.

Kendra and Maya were constructing a foot bath

Colton apparently has no idea how to use a shovel

Bentley was a big fan of the water

That's most of us bobbing around there

Colton was very good at organizing flipflops for me!

That night we had a nice dinner to celebrate Craig's birthday (we went super early and did NOT have to wait 2 hours!).  Then we headed back to the beach for family pictures.  Those will get their own post.

I love seeing my kids have fun with their cousins.  Craig doesn't have any cousins and I think it's been really eye-opening for him to see the magic of that relationship.  Someone once described a cousin as being half friend and half celebrity, and it is TOTALLY true!

Ryder and Eli were born just a couple weeks apart

The next day it was back to the beach in the morning, but this time to the beach near where Jason and Jeni were staying.  This beach had a lot less people, so that was nice.

And then we rented a couple boats for the afternoon.  (The original plan was to get just one boat, but then the Coast Guard changed the rules and determined that you couldn't have more than 12 people on a boat.  So we got a second one for free!)  We found a sand bar to play on and we visited Shell Island (true to its name, the water around the place had more hermit crabs than I've ever seen before!).  Also, the big boat had two slides, so most everyone enjoyed sliding down into the water.  Good times! 

So both of those boats were ours for the afternoon-- check out those crazy slides!

Then we just cruised around and let all the kids take a turn or two driving the boat:

After the boating, everyone was tired and sunburned and sandy and greasy (how could we have gotten sunburned after using so much sunscreen???).  We were hungry.  And gross.  We headed back to Jason and Jeni's place and dipped in their pool to rinse off the worst of the grit while Jason got coals heating up.  Then it was time for hotdogs, hamburgers, and-- of course-- s'mores!  And added bonus, my kids got to play with Peyton, who they've been longing to see again ever since we left Houston last Thanksgiving!

Colton was NOT afraid of Peyton this time, so that was nice!

My man makes a mean s'more!

Our third day, we weren't planning on going out into the sun at all (we really were all quite sunburned), but then we looked out from our balcony and saw this:

There were basically NO WAVES AT ALL!!!

So then I knew I had to go back and get into that water again.  And it was glorious, even if it did mean even MORE sunscreen plus my sun hat AND my rashguard.  Still totally worth it.  It was like bobbing around in the world's biggest bathtub.  It was relaxing and delightful.  We also played in the indoor pool some, and worked on a puzzle in the condo.  Eventually we ordered pizza (which took an hour and a half to arrive-- evidently Pineapple Willy's isn't the only slow place in Panama City!) and the grown ups sat out on the balcony while the kids were all inside.  I slipped inside at one point to get another slice of pizza and all the big kids were talking and laughing together and it was such a wonderful sight-- exactly what you hope for on a vacation like this!

After the sun had gone down, we ventured outside again, this time to ride on go-karts.  I was paired with Colton, Kamryn took Camille, Lindsy had Kendra, and Bentley was beyond excited to get to drive his own go-kart all by himself.

I look cuh-RAZY here!

Camille is READY.

Bentley was a touch nervous.  But mostly excited.

The go-karts were a blast, and I was so glad someone thought to do them at night and not during the day like we'd originally planned.  Finally we headed back, tucked the kids into bed, and began packing up.  It was time to move on to Part II of our adventure!