Thunder Beach

We drove down to Panama City, Florida this weekend to see Emily compete at Regionals and spend some time at the beach. We got to leave earlier than we had planned on Thursday due to an outbreak of swine flu in our school district.* As we settled into the 6 hour road trip we began to notice something unusual--a lot of bikers on the highway. The farther south we drove, the more we saw. When we finally pulled into our hotel and saw the marquees reading "Welcome Bikers! Welcome Gymnasts!", we knew it was going to be a loud weekend. I don't know what it is with our family and biker rallies, but it seems that every time we go to the beach we hit one. We have been to the beach during "Biker Week" and "Black Biker Week" and now "Thunder Beach". The bad thing about a biker rally is the traffic and the noise. The good thing is that the bikers seem content to just cruise the main drag over and over revving their engines and checking each other out so the actual beach wasn't crowded at all. Traffic, however, was a nightmare. While driving down the street at a crawl, Mark and I had an overwhelming urge to roll down the mini-van window and yell, "Harleys suck!", just to see what would happen. Don't worry, we controlled ourselves.

We spent Thursday evening, Saturday morning, and most of Friday on the beach. The weather was perfect, and Mark and the kids had a blast boogie boarding and jumping in the waves. Even Bryce was brave enough to try the boogie board for a while. Our hotel was right on the beach and by the end of the weekend we had probably brought 5 lbs. of sand into the room. I pity the maid who came in after we left!

Friday night we took the kids to a Brazilian barbecue restaurant--the kind where they bring the skewers of meat around to your table. We didn't know how it would go over with our picky eaters but Mark loves those places so we thought we'd give it a try. Boy, were we surprised. Natalie and Emily ate their weight in meat. They tried almost everything that came around and even worked out a little 1-10 rating scale to rate their favorites. Emily ate so much that her tiny little stomach was all distended and rock hard. It was so funny.

Before we drove home on Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at the little Panama City Beach Branch. We were waffling over whether we wanted to go or not because we were all dirty and tired and had a long drive ahead of us, but we decided to just to be good and go. To our utter amazement, in the middle of testimony meeting, Natalie got up and bore her testimony. It was the first time she has ever done that in sacrament meeting. She was so sweet and spoke about how much she loved each member of her family. Mark and I were both very touched. Who would have imagined that church would end up being the highlight of our beach weekend?





* Wednesday night Madison City, Madison County, and Huntsville City School districts all canceled school in a frenzied panic for Thursday and Friday when a two possible cases of swine flu popped up in one of the local elementary schools. A few more cases showed up at other elementary schools in Madison over the weekend so, as of now, all Madison City elementary schools are closed until May 14. The middle and high school kids went back to school today. Both Natalie and Emily (and Cindy!) felt like they got the raw end of the deal as Natalie had to get up for school today when the other kids got to stay home, and Emily had to stay home when she was supposed to be at Space Camp this week. The elementary school situation will be evaluated again later in the week and hopefully, as people realize that this disease is not as bad as first thought, the kids won't be out the full two weeks. We have had no information yet as to how or if the missed days will be made up. Natalie is praying for the elementary kids to have to go to school on Saturdays.