Summer update

Our Summer has been fairly slow. We went on vacation this week to Panama City Beach. It was supposed to last all week, but we got kicked off the Air Force Base down there b/c we weren't in the actual military.....I mean "I'm in the Lord's Army".....doesn't that count???

Jeff's uncle really did have us a place to stay for $30 a night near the beach, but because he wasn't there to check us in, they wouldn't let us on the base- we did have a visitor's pass- just not the right kind of pass in order to check into the hotel.

The first of the week we got to stay in a one-room condo that a friend of ours located for us. It was pretty nice- right on the beach, 11th floor (Every time we ever went into or out of our front door, Jonathan had to look all the way down.). It was at a resort called Splash and was kind of fancy. It had 4 pools downstairs- one of them was a kiddie-water park thing. Jonathan wouldn't go near it b/c the top had a huge bucket of water that loudly dumped water everywhere when it filled up. 2 were normal pools, and the last one was a "lazy river" thing. That was my favorite. You got a little floaty thing and the water shot you around in a circle. Other than running into (or over) kids the whole time, it was fun.

Of course, the beach was beautiful- I love the gulf. We didn't get to go in the actual ocean until day 3 b/c they had posted double red flags (DANGER- RIP TIDES). They were pretty serious about this red flag thing. They had police helicopters and cops on jet skis that would come and yell at you if you were past the point they had determined for you to go (anywhere past your knees). We had our own little policeman lodging with us though in the form of a 3 year old who was terrified of the loud waves. He loved the sand though- even made sand angels.

After getting kicked out of the air force base, we decided to start heading for home. We spoke with our travel agent - Daddy and Mom- and got a room in Columbus for the night. Then we spent the day in Pine Mountain, GA at the Wild Safari Animal Park. It sounds cheesy but was actually pretty cool. They have a ton of animals running around this park thing (zebras, wildebeast, deer, pigs, elk, etc) and you take a zebra-bus (bus painted to look like a zebra) and ride around. They come right up to the bus and put their noses in your windows. If you have food (which you buy of course), they will eat it out of your hand. It really was interesting. Jonathan's favorite animal was the pigs. At least he didn't say the squirrels.

After poking around the Little White House (FDR's Warm Springs place), we headed home.

It was a good vacation and I'm glad that we got a chance to go. Course- it is always nice to be back home, but I really miss eating lunch by the ocean.......