Blue Angels at P'Cola Beach 2009...

You had to know it was coming; after all, we choose the date for our family vacation to Pensacola Beach based on the Blue Angels Air Show!! Kristin asked me during the show this year how long we had been coming to it… I had to think for a minute and gave her a ballpark figure. But I couldn’t really remember the exact number of years, so of course it bugged me and I had to trace back the dates!

I attended my first show on the beach with my sister, Gayle, by accident of just being there that weekend, the summer of 1996. Even though it was raining that day, the Angels had to do their low show, and we had to sit in the rain to watch – I fell in love and have not missed a show on the beach since!! It probably took me at least 5 years to convince Cookie to go with me… ‘just one time’ I kept telling him, ‘I promise you’ll enjoy it’. Needless to say, he MORE than enjoyed it, he too fell in love and the two of us haven’t missed a show on Pensacola Beach in July since :) So, that means I’ve faithfully made the show now for 13 years!! And even though I didn’t think it could get better, having all the kids join us now as a family tradition has literally made it my favorite time of the year!!

I hope you enjoy the slideshow of the “Best of the Best” pilots performing these amazing flight performances. I tried to put it together so you can see some of the maneuvers in action – with some still shots in between! Go Navy :)

Happy Birthday Grandpa Cookie...

Grandpa Cookie turned 50 yesterday! We had a great time with family celebrating his birthday :) All of us was very sad that Isabella couldn't come to the celebration for a little while and we missed her a lot... But we saved her a piece of cake and a couple candles - we'll do a special little "party" next time she's here :) Here are a few pictures from a fun afternoon! I think G'pa had a really good time with Bull, Josh, Kristin, Ella, Molly, Patrick, Beth, Alston, MawMaw (his mom), and of course - me! We love you Cookie/daddy/grandpa.

Family Pictures at the Beach...

Whew, what a job! But finally I've put together a few of (I think) my favorites from our family photo shoot at the beach. These were taken with both mine and Kristin's cameras - some by us and some by Beth... it really is more stressful to get these beautiful shots than the end results of the pictures would have you think, lol. Enjoy! As before, you can click on any photo during the slideshow and it will take you to the album where you can enlarge any picture :)

Beach Snapshots...

I finally picked out some pictures to put a little album together of snapshots from the beach. This was not easy!! We took so many pictures and all of them are adorable, so besides having a ton to go through, it was very hard to choose which ones to share. *you can click on any picture to take you to the album to see full view*



My next task (which will be much, much harder) is going through the family photo shoot. The pictures below will give you an idea of why it is going to be so difficult to pick through those :)

I hope you enjoy the slideshow... we sure had fun in the moment!!

Beach with my kids...

Since the kids got here, I really haven't had much "quiet" time to myself - so while Bella and Alston is sleeping and Ella is getting a bath, I thought I'd take just a minute to post a few adorable pictures of my oh-so-beautiful family at the beach!! Click here for some cute pictures! You can also visit Kristin's blog to see some really great pictures :)