Panama City Beach!

It was so much fun to have an entire week in Panama City Beach.  We enjoyed going out to eat, shopping and really just hanging out.  With all 14 of us it wasn't always an easy task, but always an adventure!

Uncle Johnny is so much fun!

Lots of entertaining went on!  Aunt Marcia was a great reader!

It has been a tradition for Grami and Pop Pop to take the kids to Gulf World, sans parents!!  Definitely something I look forward to!  :)  I haven't actually been, but love seeing the pictures!  They talk about the dolphins and fish all the time!

The last night we were there, we did sparklers around the pool!  Poor Cooper was already in bed and missed them, but there's always next year!

Another great year at the beach spent with cousins!  Until next year...!

the BEACH!!

5 hours of driving later... we made it to Panama City Beach Florida!!  Somewhere near Destin, Josh and I may have wanted to throw each other out the window, but we blame that on traffic and no air conditioning!  We pushed through and arrived at our house only to find this:

Ahhhhhh!!!  Absolute PARADISE!

We quickly forgot about the car and decided just not to drive it for a while.  :)  Everyone else arrived late that night so we had a little time to ourselves to explore the beach and get the house ready.  This year my Aunt and Uncle and cousins came too!!  They rented another house across the street that was really close.  We had a BLAST!!  It was so much fun having all of the kids together who could play and entertain themselves.  This time we were only missing Uncle Andy!  Both Josh and Paul stayed the entire week and we all were not pregnant or with newborns, so the trip was a lot more relaxing and enjoyable!

Of course we had LOTS of beach time!

 2 mermaids and an Octopus before the tide came in!  (And an Ellie in the background refusing to touch the sand!)

RoAd TrIp #2!!

So just about a month after our first 16 hour road trip of the year to Arizona, we hopped back in the car to venture east this time for our annual Florida Memorial Day trip!  We figured we would skip the hassle of flying and just drive to make things easier.  (If you don't remember, we don't quite have the best of luck!)  Everything was going great as we packed up the car and started out.  It was only 30 minutes in where our air conditioning went out!!  It kind of slowly stopped and then fizzled out.  Then the air was not cold at all!  This is NOT what you want to happen 30 minutes in to a 13 hour drive!!!  Leave it to us!  While only a short distance outside of Dallas, we stopped at a quick fix car place and had them fill the car with coolant.  This seemed to do the job and worked great... for about another 30 minutes!  Then the same thing happened!!  We called our brother in law who knows a great deal about cars and he thought it would be best to keep driving with no AC and they could look at it together in Florida.  The back air seemed to be blowing better so the kids didn't seem too affected, however it was so loud with the windows down and so stifling with them up!  I can't say the trip was really that great and Josh and I might have had our patience tested!

We stopped at Nanny's house in Purvis, MS to break up the drive, arriving here 8 hours later.  We got a good night's sleep!  It was fun to see Nanny and LC and see Purvis for a second time.   The kids could not get enough of Aunt Jenny's Mickey Mouse room!  Cooper even found an all blue Mickey which he fittingly called {would not put down}  "Elephant Mickey!"

 Josh decided we absolutely need a porch swing on our new front porch!

 Nanny cooked us a great breakfast where Uncle Sonny and Debbie joined us and then we ventured over to Aunt Faye's house.  Aunt Faye is Nanny's older sister who just turned 96!  Neither I nor the kids had ever met her.  We had a great time talking to her, hearing stories and listening to her play the piano.  She is still sharp as a tack and a hoot to listen to!

We left town just after 10am for the remaining 5 hours of our trip.  While we turned the car on, every one of us prayed... but we still set out with NO AIR CONDITIONING!