#5--Reasons we love and will miss Pensacola

#5. Parks and Outdoor Activities

Pensacola has so many wonderful parks.  We have been so lucky to have so many great parks to choose from.  The kids love them all!

Bayview (on Bayou Texar, has a great dog beach for Reagan to swim in too!)

Tennis at Bayview Park (notice Reagan in the background!)

Same courts 3 years later!

 Fountains at Plaza de Luna

Blue Park

Perdido Kids Park

Optimist Park

Splash Pad in Navarre

Sanders Beach Park

Alabama Square Park

Squirrel Park (not it's real name, but this is what we've called it from early on)  This is probably the most visited park for us as a family.  Bball courts, great playground, shade, good swings and a great place for picnics.

CeCe and I have had lots of picnics in parks waiting to pick Bryce up from school

 Hiking at Johnson's Beach

 Hiking at Tarkiln Bayou

 There are many other parks and hiking trails that we have enjoyed over the years.  I hope Savannah's outdoor living can live up to this!! 



#6-Reasons we will love and miss Pensacola

#6.  Our house

This house has been perfect for us for the last 4 years. It has plenty of room for everyone, a great backyard, a HUGE master suite (our new house doesn't and I know we will miss this!), a formal dining room turned playroom that is perfect for the kids, and a great office with a nice big window. We haven't done much to this house, it was brand new when we moved in so we put up blinds and a few fans. In the summer of 2008 Anthony and his dad built us a great deck off of our small back porch. It added just the right amount of space for us to eat out there, which we do for every meal in nice weather.   

Bryce on the day we moved in

Building the deck

The Grandparents all went in together and bought a great swingset for Bryce's 2nd birthday. Many many hours have been spent swinging, gliding, and sliding on it. 

The side yard was great for growing tomatoes.  Bryce loved going out there and picking and eating them!

Our neighborhood is called Glenmoor Trail and it has these great little trails that go around the whole neighborhood.  We have walked and biked many miles on these trails! We have names for them: The lawnmower trail (Bryce would always take his lawnmower on this trail) the horse trail (sometimes you could see the horses from a nearby house) and the motorcycle trail (Bryce would take his tricycle/motorcycle on this one).  It was great for walking with little ones.  Once we got to the trails I didn't have to stay right with them or wory about cars. 

This was last year at Christmas.  The kids talked us into colored lights which we said we would never do.  It grew on me though and I like them!

Probably my favorite part of this house is this wonderful cove we are on.  This is our playground.  We play in the back on the swingset a good bit but there will be weeks that we only play out front.  We run, bike, chalk, play ball, play tennis, and play with our great neighbors out here.  The kids don't realize how lucky they are to have all of this extra paved space in the front of their house.  Both sets of Grandparents live on coves too so this is normal for them.  Luckily the new house has a long driveway because it is not on a cove. 

Just wanted to remember the kids bedrooms.  This was Bryce's big boy room (it now has Superheroes in place of the guitar pictures but other than that it looks the same)

This was CeCe's room back when she was known as Baby Crunchy.  We didn't find out she was a girl until her birthday so the room was pretty gender neutral.  There has been a lot of bright pink added since this picture!  She is still in her crib but when we move she will get a big girl bed. 



#7-Reasons we love and will miss Pensacola

Reason #7.  Fun Festivals

We love festivals (festibals as Bryce called them for years!)  If we hear of a festival around town we try to go.  Most of them are super fun!

Renaissance Fair in March 2008 (we never went back to this one, not our scene!)

Crawfish Festival April of 2009 (super fun, great food and music) we go to this every year.

Highland Games in April 2009.  So much fun!  Good food, good music and dancing and fun games to watch.  This was the only year we made it to this festival.  We were either out of town or it was raining every other year. 

Seafood Festival in Sept. of 2010 (delicious food, arts and crafts booths and fun things for the kids to do).  This is another one we do every year.

Taste of Pensacola Beach Sept. 2010 Great food from local restaurants and games for the kids right on the beach!

This isn't really a festival because it happens every Thursday from April-Sept. but I'm including it here because it is one of our favorite things to do.  We call it the Sunset Thing but I think the correct name is Sunsets at Plaza de Luna.  There is a great park right on the bay at the end of Palafox street with a nice grassy area.  Every Thursday in the warm months a local band sets up, a character comes for the kids and people bring blankets and picnic suppers.  The kids love dancing and running around with the 100s of other kids!

Something new to us this year was a 4th of July party/festival downtown in Seville Square.  It was super hot outside but we got there early, did the fun free things and then split before we melted.

October of 2009-Greek festival.   

I didn't realize how good Greek food is until my friend Melanie talked us into going to this festival.  DELICIOUS!  Bryce and Liam had a blast dancing to the great music and amazingly CeCe slept through it all!

Christmas in the Country

Bryce's VPK class went to a horse farm last year called The Leaning Post Ranch and we loved it. The owners are wonderful people that have done amazing things for the youth in the community.  From their website: The Leaning Post Ranch's mission is to provide equine assisted activities and therapeutic riding to individuals with disabilities and at-risk youth in Northwest Florida. We offer health, hope, and healing through horses.  A new fundraiser they are doing this year is called Christmas in the Country.  It was obvious it was their first year and hopefully they will tweak some things for next year, but we had a nice time. 

Papaw Duke bought CeCe this horse (which she named Rock after a horse at my Uncle Dave's farm) and she treats it like one of her babies, which is very special! Rock had to come with us to the horse farm.  Bryce looks so old here!!  They are waiting on their turn for the pony cart ride. 

Bryce on the pony cart.  CeCe flipped out when it was her turn so Bryce went solo. 

While Bryce was riding the pony cart, CeCe decided she wanted to ride a big horse (we had tried to get them both to do this earlier and neither was brave enough).  She did great!!  All the pictures I have exept this one she was concentrating so hard and wouldn't smile for me.  She was so serious up there.  The lady could tell I wanted to get a cute picture so she stopped the horse, only then would CeCe loosen up a bit!  She talked about riding the big horse all night!

Think they love each other? 

The flyer said they were open until 6 so we got there around 4:15 thinking we would have plenty of time, but they were closing at 5 so we missed out on the hay ride.