The Beach

Last week we went our summer vacation and we had the best time. We met my parents and sister at Panama City Beach and stayed at the Splash resort. We chose it because it looked very kid friendly and boy, it was. They had kid slides, 4 pools, a lazy river, water spitting frogs and a lot of it was covered so we didn't have to worry about sunburn. It was so nice to relax and enjoy being with family. As an added bonus there was a new mall near our condo so my mom, sis, and I got to hit up Ann Taylor Loft. Another added bonus was that on the way to the beach we stopped and stayed in Dothan. We went to a friend's wedding, stayed with dear friends, went to our old church, and visited other sweet friends. Even though we really like Chattanooga, it made us miss Dothan.

We were so proud of Emma Catherine on this trip because she became a little more brave. Even though she is so independent and wants to do things her own way, she is very scared to try new things. (like swings, the pool, slides, etc.) On this trip she tried a lot of new things. First she started swimming in the pool by herself with swimmies on. One night Ryan decided to see if she would use them and she did and then she took off. She kicked, floated, and turned all around like she had always been doing it. In the past all she would do was mostly sit on the edge of the pool and play with her buckets. She also started jumping to us from the side of the pool. I think part of the reason she was open to using them was because so many kids around her were using them. She also got brave in the kids area. She was at first nervous to go down the slides and by the end of the week, she wanted to go down by herself. She had so much fun in the pools that she really didn't want to go on the beach. We had to make her go down to the beach even for just a little while.

We tried to take family pictures on our last night and we all wore white, but unfortunately none of the pictures of the whole family really turned out. We set up the tri-pod but by the time the camera took the picture, it seemed that someone wasn't looking (especially Bailey or Emma Catherine). We also took our first trip to Gulf World. We had a good time but let's just say, it's not quite Sea World. One thing that I did learn at Gulf World was that we are definitely not ready to go to Disney World. By lunch time, Emma Catherine had had enough. The dolphin show was the last show we went to and Emma Catherine hardly watched it even though before we got there, that was the show she talked the most about. We took a ton of pictures so I am going to work on posting them using one of those pictures sites.