florida - Ground Control to Major Mom

Pensacola Blue Wahoos “Field of Dreams” Experience

15 July 13 by Major Mom

A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son's baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. — A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son’s baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.

Just before the boys left Florida for good, T’s baseball team enjoyed an evening with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. I had written about the Blue Wahoos games in a previous post in 2012.

The kids got to take part in the team’s “Field of Dreams” experience, which was a block of seats together, dinner, getting introduced as a “featured guest” at the game, and a chance to hang out with the Blue Wahoos players before the game, either by singing the national anthem with them, or else running out to the field with the players as the players’ names are called.

Florida Discoveries 41: Navarre Beach Marine Science Station

27 March 13 by Major Mom

The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station is run by Santa Rosa County and the Santa Rosa County Schools. Its mission is to promote environmental awareness through education of the county's marine ecosystem. — The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station started in August 2009 and is run by Santa Rosa County and the Santa Rosa County School District. Its mission is to promote environmental awareness through education of the county’s marine ecosystem.

Just before the kids’ Spring Break, I had the chance to partially chaperone for Timmy’s class trip to the Navarre Beach Marine Science Station. My sons have taken field trips with their classes every school year they’ve been living here, and I suspect it’s an annual tradition for all the Santa Rosa County School District kids who live on the coast.

Nostalgic note: When I was growing up in Norfolk in the 1980s, my school system also had a Marine Science Center. I’m not sure if the program still exists, but I fondly remember an annual field trip to Crossroads Elementary School, where we’d spend the day petting horseshoe crabs, learning about turtles, flounder, the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and our community’s nautical history.

The Science Station is really close, it shares a parking lot with the Navarre Beach Park beach access that our family uses quite often, only about 10 minutes from our house. It started in 2009 after the Navarre Beach State Park property was turned over to the county after suffering extensive hurricane damage in recent years.

Florida Discoveries 40: The McGuire’s St. Patrick’s Day Run

26 March 13 by Major Mom

A couple weeks ago we took part in another Florida Panhandle tradition: the McGuire’s St. Patrick’s Day 5K Prediction Run on March 9th.

This is a race that rewards not how fast you can run, but how close you finish to a time you predict at registration time. It happens to be considered the nation’s largest prediction run. It’s also a race that welcomes crazy costumes and serves Irish stew, beer and the restaurant’s signature drink, the Irish Wake, for 3 hours after the first person crosses the finish line.

Our whole family was registered to do the race, but Timmy was sick the week before, so his baseball coach offered to take him to the Navarre Baseball opening ceremonies and we were able to meet him in time for his game. Jacob was excited to take part in the run!

Florida Discoveries 39: Sea World Orlando

25 March 1316 March 13 by Major Mom

During the Disney Princess Half Marathon weekend, we played hookey off-resort and went to Sea World. — During the Disney Princess Half Marathon weekend, we played hooky off-resort and went to Sea World.

On our weekend trip to Orlando at the end of February, I was hesitant to invest in one-day Disney World tickets. The solution came easily to us. Thanks to the Sea World Entertainment Hero Salute program, military members and up to three dependents can get one day’s admission per year to one of the company’s parks: Sea World, Busch Gardens or Sesame Place.

We have taken advantage of this program many times, from Sea World when Jacob was a baby, to Sesame Place twice.

We met up our dear friends Andy and Suzy with their kids, who we joined on our last family trip to Walt Disney World in 2011 and Universal Studios in 2012. We absolutely LOVE hanging out with them and we’re so happy they took the time to join us last month. We spent the day before the half marathon at Sea World.

Florida Discoveries 38: Our Day as Parrotheads

08 March 1310 February 13 by Major Mom

Dave and I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert last week! The Pensacola show was at the tail end of the Lounging at the Lagoon tour.

Cross that one off our Florida bucket list!

We honestly didn’t know what to expect. We read about folks tailgating hours before the concert, but since the concert was on a Tuesday, and we’d have to deal with babysitting on a school night, we elected to pack our camp stove and take some marinated chicken to grill.

Dave and I also packed plenty to drink in our cooler: Margarita, whiskey sours and plenty of beer.

We left as soon as the boys came home from school, and arrived at the Pensacola Bay Center at 4pm. Four hours till showtime. We got pretty good parking, with the venue less than a 5 minute walk away. There were plenty of things to do, lots of people-watching!

Everyone dresses in tropical apparel; Dave wore one of his numerous Hawaiian shirts with flip flops, and I wore a Hawaiian dress.

I didn’t get good photos of the concert itself, but the Parrotheads of Pensacola did and put their album online here.

Florida Discoveries 37: Navarre Beach Mardi Gras Parade

08 March 1310 February 13 by Major Mom

Last year we went to Mobile and experienced some pretty serious Mardi Gras-ness. This year we kept it local, so here’s some pictures from the Navarre Beach Mardi Gras parade, sponsored by the Navarre Krewe of Jesters.

You had to get to the route quite early, since they close the bridge from the mainland to Navarre Beach 30 minutes before the parade started. We got a great viewing spot towards the end of the parade route. I thought it was the beginning of the route, oops. Which mean the beads were being rationed by this point. That’s okay, nothing will beat how much we got last year.

Also, we didn’t realize how many people brought their pets to the parade! There’s so little around here that welcomes pets, we didn’t even think to ask.

Our waiting spot for the parade. We arrived 90 minutes early, we had great viewing. We brought plenty of drinks and snacks.

This is a very brave gentleman. Very friendly too.

He was happy to take pictures with everyone.

Florida Discoveries 36: Pensacola Dog Fanciers Association Agility Trials

24 January 13 by Major Mom

The first week of January, I caught a status update on Facebook from the blog Pensacola with Kids. It’s a great Facebook page to follow when you’re looking for stuff to do on weekends around here. They suggested the four-day-long Pensacola Dog Fanciers Association Agility Trials that started on Thursday of that week and lasted through … Read more

Florida Discoveries 35.5: LEGOLAND Florida

16 March 1301 January 13 by Major Mom

I can’t believe I forgot to post about Legoland! <Facepalm!> We surprised the boys with a brief trip the day after Christmas, on our drive home from spending the holiday with Dave’s family in Tampa. Instead of writing a bunch of dialogue about it here, I will drop the Google+ photo album here and you … Read more

Florida Discoveries 35: Seacrest Wolf Preserve, Chipley, FL (and other similar facilities)

08 October 1207 October 12 by Major Mom

Earlier this year a Facebook friend (a friend from my childhood, actually) had visited the Seacrest Wolf Preserve on a recent weekend trip down from her Air Force home in Montgomery, AL. The pictures of her with a wolf puppy were simply PRECIOUS.

For those who didn’t know, our oldest son Jacob is a HUGE fan of wolves. He always gravitates towards wolves and other canis-type animals when given a choice. And he has quite the collection of stuffed wolves also.

With some simple research I figured this would make a great surprise for Jacob, especially for his birthday in September! Seacrest is the only wolf preserve in the southeast. There are others around the country, such as in Colorado, New Jersey and Ohio, but nothing this far south. We were fortunate to live less than 100 miles away.

The Seacrest Wolf Preserve only offers tours to the general public on Saturdays (but private tours can be arranged for groups), and our September calendar was pretty full on Saturdays, between Jacob’s birthday party and my being away for two Saturdays in a row for my Air Force Reserve work.

So we made the arrangements for this past Saturday and loaded the kids in the car at 9:30am and told them “It’s a surprise!”

Florida Discoveries 34: Fort McRee / Sand Island / Admiral’s Island / Dog Island / etc…

29 August 12 by Major Mom

Our friends and neighbors, the Scotts, took our family out on their boat last weekend. It was so kind of them to offer; their boat seats 4 adults and 2 kids pretty well, but no more passengers than that can fit, so we had to find a weekend that didn’t involve other visitors. We here … Read more