Home from a wonderful vacation

My  neighbor came through with the buddy passes so Austin and I flew to Panama City a week ago Sunday. Austin was so excited to be flying (he doesn't remember his first flight as a baby).

We mostly just hung out at the pool and totally enjoyed ourselves. I don't know when I've ever had a more relaxing vacation. My nephew took Austin to the beach one afternoon, once was enough, the green algae was bad and the rest of the time he was happy to be in the pool. (Mommy rejoiced!). We were usually in the pool by 8 am and pretty much stayed there until supper time. Pilar had a couple of neighbor kids that came to swim with Austin (he can't do ANYTHING alone!), so Pilar and I were able to sit around the pool talking, working Sudoku puzzles and eating. Even Austin learned how to do Sudoku and he worked on one just about every morning:

By the time we left he was swimming like a fish and we both had swimmer's ear to prove it. (I've never had an earache in my life, Man are they ever painful!) I called his pediatrician and he called in a prescription to the pharmacy down there (to the tune of $102 for 10 cc's! Highway robbery if you ask me!

I've never particularly wanted a pool in my back yard. Well, I do now! It was so wonderful to swim first thing in the morning. It was a blast for Austin and he was worn out by the end of the day. He was easy to get into bed very early (the first day he was asleep by 6pm!). He is at the perfect age for a pool. I don't know what kind, but somehow, someway there will be water in my backyard next summer. At the age Austin is we would get years of enjoyment out of it. I'll be checking out pools this winter!!

Pilar's friends have a 30 ft. cabin cruiser. They took Austin and I out in the Gulf on Friday afternoon (Pilar gets extremely sea sick so she opted out). We were hoping to see some Dolphins. We saw some off in the distance when we were going out through the bay, but on our return trip through the bay, there were some guys in a boat feeding them little fish (this is against the law), anyway, they had about 7 of them surrounding their boat. They were coming up out of the water like Flipper used to do, begging for food. Then, one by one, the guys starting jumping in the water to swim with them (we were in about 15 ft of the clearest water I've ever seen in my life), When the Dolphins saw our boat they came over to us to beg for food. We didn't feed them but they were right up next to the boat! I wanted to jump in with them so badly. If my knee had been 100% I would have done it in a heartbeat, but Kathy said it would have been too hard to get back in the boat with my knee because of the waves. It killed me to be so close to them, an opportunity I've always wanted, and have to pass it up. Before I die, I WILL swim with Dolphins. They were so friendly! It was awesome!

Steve put out some lines in the water and Austin was trying to pull in a 2 footer. Not sure what it was, but right before he got it in the boat, he let go of the bait. It was still exciting!

We got home on Sunday afternoon at 2:00. We were so worn out and slap happy by the time we were headed home that Austin was taking pictures of us on the plane.(The chlorine has taken out all the color from my hair, so here people, is the ugly truth: This is now the natural color of my hair! Scary!) He kept telling me to make faces as he snapped pictures:

I thought for sure that Austin's two fron teeth would have fallen out by the time we came home. But, NO! He protects them all the time! They are just dangling!!

Even Austin's bear, Max enjoyed the trip:

 

I still have more pictures to download, so I'll post some more soon.

It's back to work tomorrow! I miss work. I'm glad to be going back. My knee is not great, but I worked on it for about a month before the surgery when ithurt, so I can work on it now. The jury is still out on how successful this surgery was. The doctor said it would take 8 weeks for it to be perfect. Patrick is at about the 8 week mark now and his isn't perfect. I havemy doubts. I'm not ready to say that I'm glad I had it done. I hope in another month I can say that it was a complete success. In the meantime Iwill keep limping on.