Having just taken off last week to go to Round Rock, I felt a bit odd taking off yet another week to go on our annual beach trip, especially with the start of school around the corner. But, I have an amazing boss who believes in family, as well as taking off time to recharge your battery. She thought nothing of me being off two weeks in a row and while I was stressing about it, she reminded me that work would be there when I returned and to go and have a great time. So, we did just that this week - we had a great time!
When planning this years trip, I asked the boys where they wanted to stay, either in Rosemary Beach like we did last year or in Panama City Beach. We decided as a family that since we were going to go deep sea fishing this trip, we would stay in PCB, since it would be closer to our where our charter was located and with an early morning arrival time, the closer the better.
We ended up staying at Shane's parents house on Sunday night so we would be a little closer to our destination. Camden had requested to stop at the USS Alabama this year on our way to PCB, so being a little closer to our destination would not put us getting ot PCB too late despite stopping in Mobile.
We arrived to the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park a bit after noon and spent several hours touring the battleship as well as the USS Drum submarine. Due to the extremely close quarters, Camden and I decided that the submarine life would not be for us.
We arrived to PCB a bit after 6:00pm and when we went to check in we were told our room was not yet ready. Due to our arrival time, I thought it a bit odd that our room was not ready. The gentleman helping us asked me to have a seat while he called to see what was going on with our room. About 20 minutes later, he called me back to the desk and apologized that our room did not get cleaned and that he instead was going to move us to a suite. I thanked him, got our keys and headed to the 15th (top) floor. Much to our surprise, there are only 2 suites in the hotel like the one we were given to stay in. It was very spacious and nice and looked to be set up for honeymooners or someone celebrating an anniversary. LOL
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| Nina was getting some spoiling of her own staying at with my sister and her family. |
On Tuesday we spent the day at the beach and in the evening we went and ate and then the boys did some shopping.
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| Such beautiful blue skies! |
Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to head out deep sea fishing. This is something I have been looking forward to doing with the boys and I hoped and prayed they would love it as much as I do. We met our captain, Matthew, at 6:15am. Despite spending the morning dodging rain, we had a great day out on the water. I think Matthew was frustrated that we did not catch more fish, but we were not phased in the least. We saw several rainbows and caught some beautiful red snapper and one grouper (which wasn't big enough to keep). Casen was the fisherman of the day, catching more fish than anyone else, but it might be a tie between Camden and Casen on who caught the biggest fish.
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| Headed out - all smiles! |
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| Our first rainbow of the day |
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| Camden's first catch of the day |
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| Casen's first catch of the day |
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| Another rainbow |
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| And yet another rainbow! |
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| A grouper Casen caught but was not legal |
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| Casen said he had to sit because he was tired from all the fish he was catching. :) |
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| I think the fish wore them out. |
After some lunch and a little nap, the boys were ready to hit the beach once we got back to the hotel. There were not that many waves, so after a little bodyboarding, we headed to the lazy river to float and relax. We topped off our day with dinner at Waffle House (which is a tradition for us).
Our last day was spent at the beach all day. Camden had a goal of burying himself, which he started digging a hole to achieve his goal, but fortunate enough for him, another boy had the same idea and had buried himself and after he left the beach, Camden was able to get himself into the pre dug hole and had Casen and I bury him.
Yesterday there were a lot of waves for the boys to be able to have fun on with their body boards. It is one of the things they most look forward to so I was glad they finally had some good waves to ride. We had Camden's GoPro to get some good pictures and videos, however when I went to download them, I only had clips that were one second long. Fortunately, I was able to get a few good pics of all the fun they had.
As we do each year on our last evening at the beach, I took the boys down to take some pictures at the beach. The one year I didn't pack 'nicer' clothes for them to wear and they of course were way more into taking pictures.
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| They were not ever successful with this pose. |
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| This pic was Casen's idea. |
While we were enjoying the beach, Nina was living her best life by going on nightly walks, playing with her cousin, Bella, and enjoying lots of extra lovin'.
Another great beach trip in the books. Until next time Florida!
