Florida::Arrival and Pirate Parade!

Here come the Florida posts (finally)!!!! Yee-Ha!

Oh my goodness, I can't even put into words how magical this experience with our little family was.

We stayed in a 3 bedroom condo for 7 days right on the beach in Panama City, Fl.

And all we did all day every day

is absolutely

nothing.

Well, except for play on the beach, swim, and eat chocolate pudding.

(i'm addicted now.)

Ah, It was uh-maazing.

Here goes...

October 8th

We started the adventure at 4:30 am Saturday morning.

You heard me right. 4 thirty in the A to the M.

(Thank you dear Sonny)

Bless his heart, he told me the "Delta lady on the phone" gave him the choice between 7 and 11.

He chose "7" on a whim (what!? Not even eenie meenie minie moe!?) and there we were waking our kiddos up in the middle of the night to board the plane.

Luckily, they were just as excited as us and were such troopers!

We flew from SLC to Atlanta (4 hour flight) then from Atlanta to Panama City (1 hour)

Our kids were awesome. Even miss Gigi. She slept, ate a dozen packs of peanuts, and entertained some fellow passengers. The other 2 were so happy to be little aviators and get doted on constantly by the flight attendants.

We were all pretty exhausted when we landed in Florida. We picked up our car and then headed for our new home to get settled in...

We quickly realized that all the roads headed to our condo were blocked off for something and we couldn't get around it. We parked at a huge outdoor mall (fashionista Heaven btw) and went to see what was going on.

Turns out, we were just in time for their annual pirate parade.

Yay! Perfect timing.

This parade was one of the best we have ever been to.

Every float was decked out to the hilt with piratey awesomeness

And the Rockstar got to meet his idol ;)

(inspired his Halloween costume wish)

The best part was that instead of candy, they threw necklaces

by the box fulls.

Seriously. It was crazy.

At one point, a pirate spotted the Rockstar, took off his own necklace and handed it over to my little guy.

Shiver me timbers!

I guess he knows a fellow buccaneer when he sees one.

We seriously felt so lucky to have arrived at such perfect timing.

I guess this is the part that I say thank you to sonny for making the 7 am call.

thank you. :)

That night, we scarfed some Red Robin, dropped our bags off in our condo (so nice!) and then headed for the dreaded Walmart trip.

It was a nightmare.

We were all exhausted and I have NEVER seen a more packed wally!!

I think at one point Gigi was on the ground, holding Daddy's ankles, and being drug.

Yes. It was that bad.

We got back in around 9:30, watched the pirate fireworks out our balcony and then crashed.

Sleep never felt so good.