Pensacola Beach

 We took our first real vacation as a family of five last week when we traveled to Pensacola Beach, Florida. Jarrod's dad has a condo there that he owns with beautiful ocean views. It is seriously one of the most peaceful, beautiful places I've been. Maybe it is the time of year we go, but it always feels like we are at the end of the earth in a place not too many people visit. It is just so GORGEOUS. We spent five days down there with Bob and Laurie and had an excellent time. We mostly played on the beach, but we also went to a great little zoo and took a ride on an air-conditioned Ferris wheel. (Yes, you read that right!) The kids traveled pretty well. Pensacola is a small airport so a direct flight was impossible but they did awesome even with some delays on the way back! Laurie got a new camera and was trying her hand at photography while we were there. We were lucky to be her test subjects! She got some AMAZING shots. The zoo was really neat too! It was a small, family place, but they actually let you feed a lot of the animals. For anyone who has ever seen the movie, "We bought a zoo", it reminded me of that zoo after they fixed it all up. You could get really close to all of the animals and they had some great exotic stuff. They also had A LOT of room for some of the animals to roam, including a big chimpanzee island and huge prairie/meadowland that some of the zebras, antelope, etc. were roaming in. It was a really cool place!

The condo is surrounded by water on three sides and has a huge, wraparound balcony that shows off all the water views. This is looking straight into the Gulf of Mexico

Beautiful sunsets every night

Up close and personal with a Spider Monkey!

The boys pooped out at the zoo

Dylan and Nora with Grandma

This is one of my favorite shots - Nora's got em in a sleeper hold on top of a Ferris wheel

Group shot on the balcony

The following shots were taken by Laurie Yates: :) :)