Mama Kat Thursday: Celebrating on Labor Day

The Mama Kat prompt topic for today is:

" Describe how you celebrated Labor Day Weekend."

Hubby and I celebrate our wedding anniversary most Labor Day Weekends, though our actual anniversary date is Sept 4. 

Some years, it is Labor Day.
It moves around.

The long holiday offers lots of time for eating out and other fun activities!

View of one part of the Pier Park extravaganza.

So Friday, we started off our weekend driving down to Pier Park, which is about an hour drive east of us in Panana City Beach.

It's a massive shopping & restaurant complex, what I call a "outdoor mall," and includes a small amusement park in the center, which was expanded this year.

We went there to have lunch with two young Air Force guys, who lead the singles Bible Study at Tyndall Air Force Base, at the Red Robin restaurant at Pier Park. (Their Nav Staff leader is presently deployed and so we meet to encourage them.)

Then Saturday was lunch & a movie day:

First we had lunch at our local Panara Bread in Ft. Walton, where we always split on of their fabulous cinnamon rolls!
Then we went to see, "The Game Stands Tall."

The film stars Jim Caviezel, from "Person of Interest" on CBS. The high school themed film is based on a real school, real coach and real incidents, such as the coach's heart attack, a student death & the loss of a major winning streak. The movie reflects a strong faith base and is supportive of veterans, as a visit to a V.A. hospital with the team to give them some perspective is featured.

Also starring in it: Michael Chiklis, well known for playing The Thing in the Fantastic Four films and Laura Dern, from Jurassic Park.

It's a very enjoyable movie, better then we expected. 

Finally, on Labor Day itself, we made our annual trek to Shipwreck Island Water Park in Panama City Beach to run around in our swimsuits and get wet. We go this one day a year because it's the last day the park is open and it's less crowded. All the tourists have already left and it's just the locals with season passes.

Aerial View of Shipwreck Island Water Park

A couple guys from our singles Bible Study group at Eglin joined us for the day, plus those two guys we met at Red Robins from Tyndall came, too.

It was especially relaxing day with a cool sea breeze and lots of sunshine! Hubby and I just alternated between the Lazy River and Wave Pool and skipped all the spinning tube and raft things. 

And I thought our lunch was really excellent---for park food. We ate at the Captain's Grill, which offered freshly grilled chicken breast sandwich combos. It was actually terrific and we had fun eating all together, us and the 4 Air Force guys, in the shady gazebo.
We had to wait on our chicken cooking and so we chatted up the high school girl taking care of our order, who clearly was tired of her job. We brought a smile to her face, though, and made her laugh several times and even found out her goal for her summer earnings was to pay for a trip to Europe a small group from her high school was taking next year.

So, hopefully we made her day.

And that's how we spent our Labor Day Weekend!

Thanks for visiting!

*****

How'd you spend yours?