Vacation!

We had the great opportunity to once again go with our very best friends the Shelton's (see pic) on vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida. We went with them 3 years ago and were very excited to go again! We left on Friday to go to Longview and pick up Joel (he had been having his week stay with Memaw & Papaw). After enjoying dinner at Papapcita's (of course there is no better way to start vacation than a trip to Papacita's) and seeing Randy & Sherri's new house we decided to get to bed.

We met the Shelton's at 4:10 am Saturday morning on the side of Interstate 20 to start the 12 hour drive to Florida. The first couple of hours were tough until the sun came up (see pic) but overall it was not a bad trip there (trip home not as fun-but that is for later). Of course with a total of 11 people and 6 of them being kids we did a lot of stopping. Here was the first stop where Shon was checking his roof luggage...then the very next stop Craig was up checking ours! I think we stopped about every two hours and had an interesting lunch stop at Burger King (think Bon-qui-qui on Utube). The kids excitement helped the time past and we didn't hit any construction or traffic.


We made it to the Condo around 4:30 where we promptly unloaded and Tina and I headed out to Wal-Mart to buy food for the week. Listen I am an expert Wal-Mart shopper but you have never seen crazy Wal-Mart shoppers until you have shopped at the Panama City Beach Wal-mart. Because the majority of the condos turn over on Saturday then you have 1000's of people looking for the same things -milk, bread, chips, cereal, lunch meat! It is crazy! But we finally got it all done and made it back to the condo to rest. (This is a pic from our room looking down to the ocean).

Sunday morning we were up early and ready to go. We blew up all the floats and headed out to ride the waves. The current was very strong and kept pushing us away from the area in front of the condo so we would get out and walk back down the beach and get back in. On one of these occurences a huge wave came up dumping Craig and taking his glasses with it. All 5 of us made a mad dash to try and locate his glasses. Just when we were about to give up hope Joel found them - YEAH!!! We spent all of Sunday and Monday at the beach. The condo sits right on the beach and our room was on the 4th floor, so we would just walk down 3 flights of stairs and be on the beach - it was wonderful!! Of course we also made the customary trip to the arcade where the kids played a lot of video games (Tina & I did a pretty good job of making high scores on Ms. PacMan) and rode the go carts.

On Tuesday we did what is my favorite part of whole trip - we rented a pontoon boat and take it out in the bay. As we were headed out to Shell Island we chased dolphins. We had a dolphin come right up to our boat. He was so close and would just roll over and like he was waiting on us to feed him. It was AWESOME to see one so up close in its natural habitat. It played with us for a good 5 minutes before swimming off. When we got to Shell Island we walked across to the other side and snorkeled. We saw a HUGE sting ray swim between us and another group of people. That was really, really cool. As the kids were snorkeling Christian came up with a jelly fish in his net. Talk about clearing the water quickly. Caleb (who was stung last year) hit the beach like his hair was on fire. Ms. Tina came to our rescue and threw the jelly fish far out but we all swam a litle closer to the beach after that! We got back into the boat and went out a ways and decided to try and let the kids fish. We had never fished before and wasn't really for sure what bait to use but Craig had picked up some shrimp and that is what we used. We fished forever with not one bite and the kids where ready to give up. I took a pole and fished for a little while and got the first bite. I didn't catch anything but the bite excited the kids and they started fishing again. All of the sudden Lance (Shon & Tina's son) started hollering and he had a fish. He reeled and reeled and reeeled some more - what we could see of the fish we could tell it was big, just as he got it to the boat the fish broke the line and swam off. We were so dissapointed for him but that re-excited the kids and they were back with gusto to catch something. Once again Lance start hollering and he had another big one. This time again before we got it to the boat the fish broke the line and swam off. (At least we now know that shrimp works and next year they will need stronger line!). Around this time we started noticing that Joel wasn't feeling real well. He had been coughing since Saturday but nothing series. Craig called him over and started talking to him and realized that he was wheezing as he was breathing. We really did not know what to do so we prayed for him and decided we would re-evaluate him after lunch. However within about 5 minutes he progressivly got worse. Craig made the decision that we needed to go back so that he could take Joel to the Dr. Now we were about an hour from shore and if you have ever been on a pontoon boat you know it does not go very fast! All of the kids slept as we traveled back and let them off. Joel really got bad by the time Craig found a clinic and got him in. This was the 3rd time he had had this kind of asthmatic attack and although he has never been diagnosed with Asthma that is what this Dr. diagnosed him with. They gave him a couple of breathing treatments while there. I have a nebulizer but since this is not a regular occurence for us I had not packed it. Luckily late that night Craig found one really cheap and we were able to treat him the rest of the week! Back on the boat we struck we went back out to anchor somewhere and eat lunch. We ate our lunch and the kids snorkled again. We just snorkled and swam the rest of the afternoon. Emily (Shon & Tina's oldest daughter) found a star fish (see picture - it wouldn't open up for us) and that was realy cool. We also so another sting ray and Shon & Tina spotted a sea turtle as well. This is always one of the highlights of our trip and I was so sad that Craig & Joel missed it but it couldn't be helped. We are alwasy EXHAUSTED after the boat trip so it was a very quite evening.

Our plans for Wednesday were to take the kids to the water park. But we changed those plans due to Joel. He just was not well enough to go to a water park and we figured our kids could use a day out of the sun. They spent all day in the condo playing games. I tried to go down to the beach several times that day to just lay on the chairs and read but everytime I went down it would rain. I finally gave up and stayed inside. One of my biggest hopes of the trip was to get a good family picture. The kids really aren't the problem with family pictures it is me. I just don't take good pictures so we don't have a lot of us all together. Since it had been overcast and sprinkling that day it was cooler and I decided we would take our pics that night. The thing I didn't figure in was the wind. So in a lot of the pics my hair is completely blown over to the side. But thanks to Ms. Tina's perserverance we did get some that I really, really like and look forward to blowing up and framing. That night was the adults night out!! Tina's mom goes every year and she agreed to stay with the kids so that all of the adults could go out. We had such a great time and had the best shrimp I have ever eaten in my life. It was lightly battered (not fried) in a creaming white sauce and it was AWESOME. Unfortantely, Craig & Shon had ordered it so I just stole them from Craig when he wasn't looking but it was really, really, good. After dinner we just sat down on some benches and talked. I love this couple so much and we NEVER run out of things to talk about and laugh about. We truly have a great time together.

Thursday was once again a beach day. We played really hard in the morning and then decided to be done around 2:00. Later that afternoon we took all of the kids to the Dollar Store to buy sourveniours. We then came back and all of the girls went shopping and the boys stayed at the condo and played games. I LOVED going with the GIRLS to shop (not having any girls I don't get to do that often)! We had a great time and tasted some very intersting combinations of popcorn!! We had decided on Thursday to go ahead and leave on Friday rather than waiting till Saturday. So Thursday night was spent packing up, cleaning and getting ready to go home.

We left around 9:30 am on Friday and we got back to Dallas around 11:30 pm. It was a LONG drive home and not nearly as fun as the trip down. The kids were really bored and antsy on the way home which translates into a lot of: are we there yet and hitting and aggrivating each other. Regardless we were so glad we got to go and really LOVED being there with our friends! (Here are some extra pics)