The beach...

Settle in folks-- this is a long one...

with a bunch of random thoughts on our where abouts last week...
Look out beach--here we come!!

My husband wore flip flops!! I can't tell you the last time I saw him wear flip flops... it's been a L_O_N_G time-- if ever...

Mexico Beach was stunning... we were blessed with emerald waters...

and white sand beaches studded with seashells...

It was absolutely breathtaking...

and almost painfully beautiful...

it broke my heart as I stood there taking in this wonderous place and thought of the oil disaster we are currently faced with.

The kids took to the water almost immediatley...

This was pretty much my view of Felix for the entire week--He barely came out of the water...

Lily was in the surf pretty much the whole time... her swimming is really starting to take off, so she thought she was invincible-- you really had to watch her.

For at least the first day Clara wanted nothing to do with the water. She was content to build sandcastles and then immediatley squash them and start again.
Of course I just love looking at those sand caked little piggies...

By the end of the first day she was really starting to warm up to it, and before long she was out there riding the waves just like her siblings... forgetting all about her castle stomping...

There was the mandatory shrimp cleaning...

I lost track of how many pounds of shrimp we ate that week--- 6lbs? 8 lbs? It was A LOT!
We took a few side trips--to places like Apalachicola, a little fishing community to the East where the locals run on what they call "island time"...

It was a quaint little town filled with cool pedestrian malls and quirky little shops...

And neat relics like this old boat...

We ate homemade gelato at this great little chocolate shop... just look at the character of this building! Amazing!

I think the world would be a much happier place if we all bought chocolate in these quantities...

We also took a little side trip to the West to the craziness of Panama City and visited Gulf World...

Where we were able to get up close to beautiful birds like this...

I've never seen a solid blue macaw before!

There were penguins...

And sealions...

And HUGE seaturtles...


And stingrays you could pet (for the record, the stingrays lost some of their cool factor when they decided to join us for swim time at the beach... I don't really enjoy seeing the wildlife while I'm swimming...)

but what we really went to Panama City to see where these guys...

The kids had never seen a dolphin before, so it was a real treat to watch their faces light up...

Of course Paul says it was as much about me wanting to see the dolphins as it was wanting the kids to see the dolphins...

Can you blame me??? They are such graceful creatures! I could watch them all day.


And my youngest child shares my passion... she's already talking about swimming with the dophins when she grows up. I tell ya, between training elephants for the circus and training dophins for the aquariums, she's got quite the busy schedule ahead of her.


Towards the end of the week, we were also doing a lot of this...



Having had a good dose of sun and water and fun, we headed back home... and Monday morning wasn't quite so painful because of all the great rest we had gotten.