Beach Vacation!

After much anxiety of whether or not the oil spill in the gulf would affect our vacation, we decided not to cancel our reservations and stick it out. Boy, are we glad that we did!! We could not have asked for more beautiful weather!

The first 2 days there were double red flags which means you are not supposed to be in the water. The rule breaker that I am, we got in the water, but not too deep. The waves were really big and loud and a bit scarey when we got to looking at how harsh they were. But after the first two days, we had yellow flags the rest of the days. By the end of our vacation, the ocean was almost as calm as a lake and as blue/green as the Caribbean. I've gone to Panama City Beach since I was a child and never remember the water being more beautiful than it was when we were there last week!

Two other couples were there as well so we had a lot of entertaining! We were able to do a lot of fun things with the kids as well. Two of the first time things were Putt Putt and for Will, riding Go Carts! That has always been one of the favorite things that the twins always enjoys doing and this year Will was tall enough to go on the "big" track!! Just like Drew and Kaylea, he LOVED it!! Too bad all I had was my camera phone to take pictures. :(

Another first, was the men decided to ride the Coyote Ugly bull!!! Yes, I said Coyote Ugly! Definitely not a "kid friendly" place, but the bull was in the parking lot and every night we would ride by it and say that the men needed to ride it. One night at dinner, the men brought it up, and within about 10 seconds had all decided that they wanted to ride it! Brian went first, Wingate went second, and Shane went last. We piled all 7 kids in the back of the "Hoopty" (Shane's suburban) for the kids to watch! Yes, we parked the van in the Coyote Ugly parking lot and the kids got to enjoy watching their dad's ride a mechanical bull!! Oh what fun! Luckily we were there just after dark and there wasn't a crowd there yet.

Here are a few pictures of our vacation!

Drew

The boys (they used the floaty as their football)

Will

Kaylea

Never have I seen the water so beautiful and the sand so white!

The kids enjoying the pool!

The men I love most!
Typical Pridgen Family picture :)

All 3, looking and smiling

I take this same picture every year.

Although we hated to come home, we were definitely ready to come home!!! There's definitely nothing like Home Sweet Home!