We have so much to be thankful for here at Pensacola with Kids.  We have grown in leaps and bounds this year!  At the beginning of 2010, we changed the look of the site making it more magazine-like to showcase each of our posts.  As we continued to grow throughout the year, we realized that there were some things lacking in the new look.  As more and more posts about one time events, savings, giveaways and news were added, it made it more and more difficult to find reviews of activities.  When you use our search function to find a review, it brings up a list of every post we have ever written about that activity…not just the review.  As we considered your suggestions and our thoughts, we knew it was time for a change again!

Welcome to the new and improved Pensacola with Kids!  You will find several new things as well as old favorites. 

Here are a couple of new features!

• An Index of Activities - There is an alphabetized list of all things we have reviewed so far or you can search by topic (Amusement Parks and Attractions, Bowling Alleys, Day Trips and Overnighters, Family Friendly Events, Farms, Zoos and Gardens, Hiking and Walking, Museums and Monuments, National and State Parks, Parks and Playplaces, Places to Eat, Storytimes)
• The ability to continuously scroll through the posts with the latest post first
• Advertising space to advertise your business (Introductory rates are inexpensive!  For more information, please email me at jennifer (at) pensacolawithkids (dot) com.
• A list of the last ten posts for quick access

Things to look for in the future:

• Calendar – One of our New Year’s Resolutions is to get the Calendar back up and running with family friendly events around town.  It is extremely time consuming but we are going to try to be consistent with it.
• Continuous updating of the index – As we add a new review, we will be sure to add it to the index. 
• More guest posts – If you are interested in writing a guest post, let us know!
• Category Clean Up – We are going to spend January cleaning up the categories so they match the index of activities and makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

Thanks so much for your support!  It is because of you all that Pensacola with Kids continue to grow.  We hope you stick around for another fantastic year of exploring Pensacola in 2011!

Congratulations, Carmen!  You were the randomly selected winner, via random number generator, with your comment:

“The monkeys are just too cute! My kiddo would love them! I think it’s a great idea with her business idea! Rock on! I like the idea too of something other than flowers. Good luck to all those in the pool to win!”

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the giveaway and to all of you who stopped by The Gracious Basket website.  Thank you so much to The Gracious Basket for their generous donation!

Carmen–Email me at jennifer (at) pensacolawithkids (dot) com or use the Contact Form.  Be sure to include your address so that The Gracious Basket can get your Valentine’s Basket in the mail!  Enjoy!

Better late than never, I always say!  I finally had a chance to sit down and update the Calendar of Events for the rest of January and February.  We also added a few dates in March.  We are constantly updating the calendar so if you know of family friendly events that are coming up and would like to have them added, please email me at jennifer (at) pensacolawithkids (dot) com or use the Contact link on the navigation bar.

If you have been to the site before, you will have noticed that there have been lots of changes this week!  Today we are unveiling the new and improved Pensacola with Kids!  The new look is more of a clean magazine/news look and I hope that it will make it easier for you to find what you are looking for.  Let’s take a tour!

When you load up the site, you will see this:

On the navigation bar you can return to the homepage, check out our calendar, subscribe to the site via a reader or your email, and contact me.

On the left side of the screen, you will see the latest post and below that you will see a featured post.  The featured post will be one of my favorites for the week or a post that is informing you of an upcoming activity.

To the right of that, you will find the five latest posts and the categories.  The categories are the same categories that you have come to know and love.

If you can’t find something that you are looking for or if you have some suggestions for the site (or activities for us to try/write about) then please contact me!  Thanks again for all of your support over the last year.  We look forward to many more adventures!

We haven’t been blogging about exploring Pensacola with your kids for a full year yet, but what a year 2009 was for Pensacola with Kids!  We wanted to take a moment to say thank you for all of the support you have given Pensacola with Kids.  The emails informing us about family friendly activities, the kind email compliments, the guest posts and passing our website address to your friends and family have helped us get to where we are today!  December has been very busy and we haven’t been blogging a lot, but we are ready to kickstart 2010 and get back into full gear! 

We will be adding a few new features to the site and we are still in the process of a site makeover!  One of the new features that I am looking forward to is Mystery Photo Monday!  We will have a photo from somewhere around Pensacola and readers will have a chance to comment on where they think the photo was taken!  We will also have some more posts in the overnight trip section.  There are some great cities to visit nearby and we want to share our favorites.  I am also going to be more diligent about taking our camera with us when we eat out!  We don’t eat out very often, but we love finding restaurants that might not look kid-friendly on the surface but actually are!

If you like what you see, would you consider consider subscribing to Pensacola with Kids in a reader or receive the website updates via email by clicking this link and subscribing.  Subscriptions are free and you will receive website updates via your email or you can read the posts in your preferred reader (I prefer Google Reader!).

If you are on Facebook, please consider becoming a fan on Facebook!

Thanks again for all of your support and kind words.  We are looking forward to exploring Pensacola with you!

Ps.  Look for a post later today with our top 5 family friendly favorites from 2009.  My kids are picking their favorites!

We have updated the December calendar with upcoming events.  If you have an event you would like to see added, please contact us via email at jennifer (at) pensacolawithkids (dot) com, use the Contact Form above or comment in this post.

I have spent the greater part of this morning updating our Calendar of Events for the month of November.  There are some great events coming up!  I can’t wait to attend and write about several of them.  Some of the events we plan on attending are the Gulf Coast Arts Festival, an Ice Flyers Game, storytime, and Marketbasket (for some mommy time of course!). 

Remember-we receive information about upcoming events through press releases, word of mouth and local newspapers.  If you have an event or know of one in the month of November or December, please leave a comment in this post.  You can also send me an email through the Contact Form or to jennifer (at) pensacolawithkids (dot) com.