Seacrest Beach: June 2015
- Published: 12 July 2015
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Our first "official" vacation with 3 kids went about like you'd expect. On the drive down, I decided to take a "shortcut", turning a 5 hour drive into a 6 1/2 hour drive. We finally made it to our condo - the same awesome one we've been staying in the last few years - and settled in for a week of fun and sun.
The first day was awesome. The beach was perfect, the water was calm, and the temperature was an enjoyable 85 degrees. Then the rains came, the rest of the week was a mix of cloudy skies and heavy rains, bringing rough water accompanied by yellow flags which would turn red by the weekend.
Two days into the trip, Finley developed a high fever (101). We called the doctor and were instructed to take her to the emergency room. Not familiar with the local hospitals, we called Blue Cross to see where we could take her that would be covered under our insurance plan. Blue Cross gave us two hospitals near us that we could use. I called the first one he gave us to ask if they treated infants. They did, so Susan headed out to the ER with Finley while I stayed at the condo with Colt and Sadie. Also, this is of course at midnight.
Susan arrives at the hospital. The doctor is a former military doctor. From Susan's description, I'm not sure he has ever held a baby let alone treat one. He presribed 4 separate medications for Finley: tylenol, an anti-biotic, an allergy medication, and a steroid and sent them home. This set off some alarms for Susan and she asked the orderly who helped them out to the car and was told, "yeah, we don't get many infants here, so you may want to talk to your pediatrician before filling those". That 2nd hospital on this list turned out to be one of the top pediatric hospitals in the region.
We filled 2 of the 4 prescriptions (at a fraction of the dosage) after speaking to our pediatrician and Finley quickly bounced back. On the way back from the pharmacy, the Jeep started overheating. After some roadside inspection, I discover the radiator is leaking and has to be replaced. We have it towed 30 miles to the repair shop and end up car-less for the next 24 hours, so we are stuck at the condo. It is still raining.
Many movies later, the Jeep is ready and we are back in business. It was still raining, so we went to WonderWorks, an indoor amusement park in Panama City. As did the rest of Panama City. There were lots of rides and activities at WonderWorks, including an elevated ropes course on the top floor of the building. Colt and I waited over 2 hours in line to go on the course. Once we reached the front of the line, he decided it was too high for him. So that was that.
At this point, the clouds part enough to venture back out to the beach. The water was still too rough to go out very far, so we setup camp on the beach and the kids play in the sand. Despite the challenges, we managed to get in A LOT of quality time with each other in all in all was a good and memorable trip!