M & M: Beach Trip days 1-3

Last week Zach and I traveled down to Panama City Beach with two of our best friends Stephanie and Justin. I am not going to bother telling you about them because I mention them in like every other blog post so by now you should all be acquainted! We had decided to not bring Micah on the trip. We went to the beach last year with two of our other best friends Matt and Leslie and had Micah and Isabella with us then and while it was a fun trip there wasn't much beach time involved since we had a 14 month old and a 4 month old in tow. Zach and I have frequently ask ourselves what we were thinking. I guess our naive parenting minds assumed he would sit quietly under an umbrella while we lied around. So not the case!

We were temporarily childless and staying in a great beach house (thanks to Justin's dad Tommy) which gave us unlimited possibilities to do everything you can't do with a toddler. I missed my little boy terribly but still I had a blast!! There is a good chance this post could be kind of long because I am planning to give you a day by day update with pictures included but I won't cry if you don't read it all at once. Feel free to take a break whenever necessary!

Day 1: BEACH!!! Beautiful!!! It was so breezy and beautiful on Sunday. Very dangerous for your first beach day because it's a great way to get FRIED and then have a miserable rest of your trip. We did pretty well except for Justin's burned face, Zach's burned chest, and my burned booty. Ok so Stephanie did well.
Day 2: To give our skin time to heal from the first day we decided day 2 would be perfect for shopping! We drove down to the outlets in Sandestin and spent a lot of time and a lot of money. The boys racked up! They both looked so handsome in their new work clothes and it's always great to have someone else their to encourage Zach to actually spend money on himself. On the way home we stopped at Camp Helen State Park. Very cool apart from the old insane asylum type buildings and the signs saying beware of crocodiles, but I am a scaredy cat and am always envisioning the worst so don't take my word as truth! We walked down to the beach there and took pictures under the old pier. Very cool. I love old piers you know the ones just sticking out of the water. It makes me wonder what it used to look like and who used to play there.


Day 3: Justin's dad had gotten us all a Pontoon boat for the afternoon. We drove down to the harbor in PC and set out for Shell Island. Earlier that morning the boys had gotten 3 day fishing licenses so they were eager to see what they could catch. We through the anchor not far from the bay side of the gulf and walked across the island to the ocean side. The water was GORGEOUS! Much nicer than the seaweedy water we had the first day. We swam and threw the football. I ended up going to sit on the beach and let the waves crash on me when I saw the other three coming in to shallow water pretty quickly. A nice sized shark was swimming about 10-20 yards from where we had been swimming. That put an end to that pretty quickly. The rest of the afternoon we sailed/drove whatever around the water spotting dolphins and trying to find good places for the boys to fish. It was a great day!