Panama City Beach 2011

As you all probably know, we went to PCB, FL week before last. It was about a 14 hour drive from here so we left on Monday and stayed in a Hotel for a night in Pensacola, FL to break up the trip a bit. We had planned on staying 5 nights at the beach but come Sunday when it was time for us to go.. we decided to stay another night at the beach and then drive the entire way home on Monday, instead of stopping in at another hotel :)

Thursday, Aug. 11th was our 10TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!! So this trip was planned to celebrate that and also a much needed family vacation. Grace went to the beach when she was 4 months old but hasn't been since so this was really a new experience for her. She LOVED it! Loved the beach, the sand, the pool, the ocean, etc. etc. She kept called the condo "our house in Florida". Adam and I decided that had a really nice ring... ha! :) She talks about going back to 'our house in Florida'.

There was a rain shower almost every day that we were there. Thankfully they didn't last too long at any time. It was cloudy some.. but Adam would say that's perfect and besides I got sunburned on the second day there! It was still a WONDERFUL trip. My boss at work loaned us her tent/ gazebo for the beach for those sunny times and it was great for Adam and Grace.

Our anniversary we went to Gulf World Marine Park and later that evening to Captain Anderson's Restaurant. It was all perfect!! We spent lots of nights at the new Pier Park that has shopping, many activities, rides for the kids, eateries, etc. We love that place too. We made just about a nightly routine to 'splurge' with ice cream/ yogurt in Pier Park. After all... it WAS vacation! We also went to Funland Arcade the first day we arrived while waiting on our room to be cleaned. This was so great because this is the SAME place I used to go with my family as a kid when we vacationed at PCB while we were waiting to get in our room. It was awesome to get to now make memories of doing the same thing with our kid. She loved it too! We all did!!

Another great memory... Goofy Golf. My family and I used to go there and play miniature golf also. There are pictures of that... now pictures with our little family!!:) Now Grace playing miniature golf, that was another funny story. She couldn't quiet get the whole hitting the ball in the hole so we told her to just throw it.. you can imagine how that went... ha ha ha!! She ended up just placing her balls in the holes and of course she did GREAT in our eyes! :)

On Saturday night, we went on our free dolphin cruise (courtesy of Bookit.com) and had so much fun. Grace got in on the dance and hula hoop contest. What she didn't realize is that I held the hula hoop and twirled it round and round her dancing hips to make her feel like she was DOING IT!! She couldn't do it herself :)

Overall, we are very thankful for our time and Grace did fabulous with the very LONG drive to and from FL. I took 250+ pictures so I couldn't narrow it down that much so it's a slideshow of all the favorites. You can arrow to the next to go faster... :)