Sunday morning we woke the kids up at 5am and told them to go to the bathroom, get dressed in shorts and t-shirts, and get in the car. They didn't know, but a month earlier we had rented a house on the beach in Florida's panhandle.
We wanted to surprise them, which took a bit of finagling because we had to pack for them and we had to let our babysitter know that she had that week off. We told the kids (and Kala) that Rob had a week of vacation he needed to use up, so he had decided to stay home and we were going to spend the week sorting through everyone's clothes and organizing sizes and packing up clothes that didn't fit anyone anymore. We asked them to help prepare for it by setting out five sets of clothes each and one set of flipflops and their bathing suits (so we could go to Jojo's pool). Voila! All we had to do was put them in a suitcases after the kids went to bed.
The kids want to help tell the story . . .
Megan: So it was 5 am and I had been woken up.
Kylie: I thought "Why did you wake us up now?"
Megan: At first I was really grumpy because I was really tired and hadn't gone to bed until 10pm. When Mom said that we were going to FL, I was really surprised because we hadn't done something like that in a long time.
Jack: I said "Just get in the car and GO Mom!"
Beth: I felt really excited, but not that excited about the part that it would take a whole day to drive there. The drive was long and boring. It was the LONGEST day of my life!
Kylie: The drive was shorter than I expected. It felt like a long time at the ending, but not at the beginning.
Beth: I remember the awesome ocean views. They were so pretty! And I got to see a famous boat that was cool (the USS Alabama). That was the coolest part of the ride.
(I tried to take a picture on the way back.)
Kylie: I didn't expect you to bring electronics, so I thought it would be more boring than it was (we brought our Kindle Fire, my old smart phone that still had games on it, and coloring books and crayons for each of the kids).
Jack: I remember the Mississippi river. It was HUGE. Like a giant earthquake crack that sliced the land in half.
Kylie: There were really big trees that were long and skinny and sometimes there was orange dirt.
Beth: It was AWESOME!
Kylie: We saw low tide on the drive. It awesome because all the land was sticking out from the water.
Beth: I saw someone push a seagull out of their window.
Eva: We got ice cream
Kylie: When we got Subway for lunch, there were bags of gummi worms, 2 for $1, and Mom wouldn't let me buy them. She said the line was too big.
We got there around 9:30 pm (8:30 pm Central, so it took about 15 hours total). The house was way out in the middle of nowhere outside of a tiny fishing village. It was on the edge of a protected forest area and we kept seeing signs for black bears. It was remote enough that the GPS only took us to the general area, then we had to find it on our own. I'm impressed we found it in the dark!
This is what it looked like in the day time. Notice the bear lock on the garbage can.
Here is a shot of the house the next morning.
Kylie: When we got the house, it was not like I had imagined. It was pretty weird. The stairs creeped us all out.
Beth: The house looked kind of weird at first, but we got used to it later. We wanted to explore the whole house, but you didn't let us.
Kylie: Yes she did.
Beth: No. She stopped us from opening every single cabinet.
Jack: I thought it was kind of creepy. The stairs scared me.
Kylie: It was really well hidden. You couldn't see our back yard though. The stairs in front of the house had a railing on one side, but not the other.
Megan: At first it was kind of strange because it was a brand new place and I felt like I had to explore every inch of it. It was cool.
Eva: It was awesome. I liked the porch. I really liked it. Can we go there again? But this time we'd bring our own toilets because we need a toilet outside so we don't need to go inside.
The house was . . . unique. It took Rob and I ten minutes to figure out how to turn on the lights. To get to the bedrooms upstairs, you had to go outside onto the screen porch and up a set of very slanted stairs with no railing (at least the stairs were solid). It took us half an hour to find the second bathroom because there was no entrance to it from inside the house. You had to go onto the screen porch to access it. Rob postulated that different parts of the house had been destroyed in hurricanes and they just built something to fill in the holes in the walls. I thought perhaps it was designed by Dr. Seuss.
It didn't take long to unpack the car. We let the kids relax and play for a little bit, even though it was late, because we'd been in the car for so long. They discovered a little silver case that contained a chinese checker board on one side and a chess board on the other, along with chess pieces, checkers, another other types of game pieces. It became a favorite activity while we were there, although I don't think I ever saw them play any of those games the way they were "supposed" to be played. Rob and I got constant amusement from listening to their game rules and strategies.
Laura was practically glued to my lap for most of the trip. I think she misses me when I'm at work. She was thrilled to have me there all day for several days straight.
We put the kids to bed and locked up downstairs. Rob stopped me as the two of us walked upstairs and made me listen. We could hear the lap of the waves on the beach. That is one of my very favorite sounds in the world. Despite the eccentricities of the house, this would be a good vacation.
The next morning we all woke up just after sunrise and headed down to explore the beach. The older four kids have played on a beach, but the last time they did so was eight years ago. Laura saw a beach when she was three weeks old, but I strongly doubt she remembers that. I think Megan and Kylie might have vague memories of the beach, but Jack was 9 months old and Beth was two, so I don't think they remember it.
I walked behind them so I could see everyone's reactions. It was amazing to see their joy and wonderment as they saw the ocean (technically the Gulf of Mexico). Beth was so excited she screamed. It was totally worth the 15 hour drive and the weird house!
Megan: When I first saw the beach, I thought "THIS IS AWESOME!!!!"
Kylie: It looked really small from the house. It was much bigger than I imagined. I didn't think the sand would be white.
Beth: I thought "Whoa! Cool!"
Jack: I saw the whole place and we couldn't see anybody and it was all for us to play on and I thought "Sweet!"
Eva: The ocean was huge and there was people there. Mommy, we have to go there again.
The kids ran back to the house to put on their swimsuits.
This is the view of our house from the beach.
We played on the beach all morning. I chose not to get in the water and was reminded just how covered in sand one gets when sitting on the beach. Rob and I realized we had been picturing a sanitized beach, which this obviously was not. It was interesting to see the crabs, who had holes all up and down the beach, and the hermit crabs, and the snails, and the small fish in the water. The water also had tons of these things that were black and gelatinous and odd looking. Neither Rob nor I had never seen anything like it before, but it looked like it might be some type of sea slug or perhaps a weird looking jellyfish, so we told the kids not to touch them. There were several small butterfly nets in the house and the kids used them to catch and examine the blobs. They were never able to catch fish in them, although Rob caught a 6-8 inch silver fish using his hands and a sand toy (we threw the fish back after the kids got to look at it).
One of the blobs -
The water was super warm and really shallow. We discovered later that day at low tide that there was a huge sand bar stretching out a couple hundred feet into the water. This made it really safe for the kids to play in the water and made me feel much better about it (I had been a little worried about high waves and strong currents since my kids were used to pools).
The whole drive to FL, Rob kept telling the kids we were going to look for "whalemingos" - a creature from a Phineas and Ferb episode. Laura spotted a sandpiper scuttling along the beach and excitedly exclaimed "A whalemingo, Mommy!!!!" From that point on, sandpipers were referred to as whalemingos.
We didn't see a huge variety of birds. We saw seagulls, sandpipers, and, surprisingly to me, pelicans. I don't know if I'd ever seen a pelican in the wild before. It was cool to watch them dive for fish.
When the sun got high enough that we started worrying about sunburns (around 10 am), we headed back to the house. We really appreciated that they had an outside shower head and seeing all the seawater and sand that were tracked into the house, even with the outside shower, made me understand why the house was a bit dirtier than I had thought it would be.
We had a picnic lunch in the living room. The dining room table was on the screened porch, which was not air conditioned.
We gave the five older kids the card games I had brought. The house had a tv, but we told the kids we weren't turning it on at all while we were there, and we didn't. They played card games, dominos, and with the chess/chinese checker board while Rob, Laura, and I laid down in the downstairs bedroom.
As Laura fell asleep, Rob and I talked. This trip made both of us see more clearly the cost of my heart issues. It was hard to realize that our kids had no memories of vacations like these. We had worked so hard to be sure to include vacations until I ended up on bedrest with Eva, then Laura, then was diagnosed with heart failure. It was hard to see that Rob and I had been transformed into a chronically ill woman and her caregiver. Neither one of us had any idea of what this disease would do to us, and while there have been lessons we've learned from it that are valuable enough that neither of us would go back and change it if we could, those lessons have come at a huge cost. I don't think you ever understand how catastrophic an illness like this is unless you go through it. We are so grateful that we are among the lucky ones that get to have a future on the other side of this experience and we decided we really need to make vacations a priority, even if they are short or low-key.
I took a nap with Laura (Rob went and hung out with the other kids) and woke up before she did. I lay there holding her and listening to the ocean and hearing the distant sound of the kids playing in the other room.
Once Laura woke up, Rob and I rested and read until we were informed that someone had locked the upstairs bathroom door and closed it. It took two hours to get the stupid door open and we finally ended up having to take the door handle off. *sigh*
After that debacle, we headed into town to find a Walmart and buy flipflops for me (I had brought ones with memory foam, which doesn't work very well with sand and water), Beth (her's broke), Eva (true to form, she brought high-heeled strappy sandals instead of flip flops), and Laura (who brought sneakers because she doesn't like flip flops). We managed to find sparkly Frozen flip flops for Laura, who loved them enough that she actually wore them about half the time (the floor at the house was dirty and the wooden part gave Beth a splinter, so we really wanted everyone to wear shoes all the time). Eva got Minnie Mouse flip flops with a pink bow on them. Fancy flip flops were insanely cheap in Florida and they had a huge variety. If it didn't take a 15 hour drive, I'd go there every summer just to get flip flops.
After dinner, we headed back to the beach. This time I got in the water. Kylie and I discovered that we could use sand toys to "pan" for shells. We found tons of tiny shells.
Beth collected snails and made a habitat for them in a bucket. Megan and Jack tried catching fish. Rob saw a stingray and decided to spend the rest of the trip out of the water, so he played on the beach with Laura and let her cover him with sand. Eva collected shells and dug in the sand. I looked up at Rob and smiled. It was totally a Norman Rockwell evening :)
Rob and I taught the kids how to play Uno once we went back up to the house. Rob won. Beth decided to take an approach opposite to a "poker face" and chuckled loudly and evilly every time she drew a card.
Beth: Not every time. Only when it was an evil card.
Megan: I sort of liked it, but I don't like it when I lose.
Kylie: She lost every time to me, so she must be incredibly grumpy.
Beth: We made up our own rules for Uno. You can make teams and they were only teams of two or three and you could not share cards, but you could look at each other's cards and help each other. Both people in the team have to win for their team to win. Me and Kylie made the best team and we beat Megan and Jack nearly every time.
The kids slept in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It had a double bed, which Megan and Laura shared, and three single beds. We brought another single mattress in and put it on the floor so there was room for all six. Rob and I got our own room next door to the kids' room. It had two double beds and a single bed (the mattress we dragged to the kids' room). The beds were like rocks. There were lots of pillows and they were somehow all about three times thicker than a regular pillow and seemed soft, but didn't compact almost at all. The combination meant that it felt like we were sleeping on cloth covered boards with our heads propped up at 45 degree angles by two by fours. It made us really appreciate our beds at home!
Every night we were there, we'd put the kids to bed and leave the doors to both bedrooms open and I'd sing them to sleep from my bedroom. I used to be able to do that every night. I need to try to do it more often.
Kylie: I liked having my own bed. I had the fluffiest pillow.
Megan: My pillow was really stiff and I missed my bed at home. I loved Mom singing me to sleep.
Eva: My bed was soft and my pillow was soft and comfortable.
Beth: Mom singing really helped to get Laura and Eva to sleep.
Megan: Laura slept across me like a belt.
Tuesday we all slept in late and decided to forgo the beach in the morning because it took so long to get cleaned up. Instead, we loaded everyone into the car and drove to Georgia. Both Rob and I want to hit all 50 states as part of our bucket list and we'd love to have the kids see as many as possible as well. On this trip, I added three states (LA, MS, AL), Rob, Megan, and Kylie added four (LA, MS, AL, GA), and the younger four kids added five states (LA, MS, AL, GA, FL). I only have five states left to visit (ND, CA, NV, HI, AK). Rob has four left (NC, SC, ND, HI).
We picked a town in GA close to the FL border and googled homemade ice cream stores in that town. We ended up at a little deli that served Bluebell Ice Cream (which for those not in TX is about as Texan as cowboy hats), although since Bluebell isn't currently being produced (a health issue at some of their plants which produced the equivalent of a statewide disaster in TX), they were serving something else. They also had pimento cheese sandwiches and slices of caramel cake, but we stuck with ice cream.
It seemed like such a small thing, but as we were driving home on Thursday, we asked the kids what their favorite parts of the trip were and every one of them listed getting ice cream in GA.
Rob loved southern Georgia. It reminded him of Oregon with all the trees and underbrush and green. All the plant life made it seem like we were almost in a bubble. It filtered noise and the view and felt really peaceful. I think he seriously considered having both of us quit and move there, even if we both had to work at the local Piggly Wiggly.
And a bonus cute photo of Laura -
On the way home we stopped at a roadside fruit stand. We bought peaches and a watermelon and boiled peanuts (which are now a family favorite - they surprisingly taste like mashed potatoes). We also bought homemade beef jerky, kangaroo jerky, and alpaca jerky. Because one of Rob's bucket list items is to eat "every type of large mammal", although he also includes things like alligator and frog legs, so I think it's more every animal eaten by someone somewhere. Except genitalia (i.e. rocky mountain oysters, otherwise known as calf fries). You have to draw the line somewhere.
Then we pulled into a small fish market to buy fresh seafood. Kylie and I went in together. We bought two pounds of fresh shrimp, a pound and a half of smoked mullet (a local specialty, smoked right in the store), and a pound of alligator (another local specialty). The owner told us since it was our first time there, we had to try his dips. He had us sample his deviled crab, deviled shrimp, and a third dip he called "hot mess". Kylie picked the deviled crab dip and we bought a container of that.
He asked when we were leaving. He was disappointed to hear that we wouldn't be there on Saturday. Alligator season opened on Friday and had we stayed until Saturday, we could have brought the kids in to see the alligators stacked up in the walk in freezer. He showed us pictures of the biggest one from last year, but apparently it would have been much better in person. He gave me a quick lesson on how to cook alligator (which is a white meat similar to pork, but with a distinctive taste) and made sure I was going to boil the shrimp since they still had heads.
I asked him if he knew what those black blog things in the water were. He got a weird look on his face and said "Don't touch them!" I assured him we hadn't and again asked what they were. Porpoise poop. Fabulous. There was dolphin poop in the water too. It looks like dog poop, except bigger. Due to the sheer volume of what was in the water on Monday, there must have been an international meeting of porpoises and dolphins, at which they exclusively served bran muffins and coffee, about a hundred feet off our beach.
Ahh, the joys of nature.
We boiled the shrimp and sauteed the alligator in garlic butter (which we used to dip the shrimp in since we didn't have cocktail sauce). We didn't have crackers, but deviled crab dip tastes pretty good with pretzels. Kylie and I probably ate a pound of the shrimp between the two of us. It was the best shrimp I've ever had. Rob loved the alligator. The rest of the kids liked most of it, but weren't quite as impressed. Except for Jack. He had ham roll-ups.
Rob was really tired, so he laid down to take a nap. The kids and I changed into our swimsuits and headed down to the beach. While Rob slept, the seven of us built a sandcastle. Rob took a photo of us with our sandcastle when he woke up.
Beth contributed by finding snails to guard the moat.
Jack dug a huge tunnel through the back and found a gigantic clam at the bottom of the hole. We forgot to get a picture of it, but it was probably 7-8 inches long.
This is my favorite photo from the trip -
We played in the waves and looked for shells and I tried to ignore the porpoise and dolphin poop, which was considerably less that day than the day before. I tried telling myself that the salt content of the water kept it relatively clean. I also reminded myself that the ocean was full of sea creature poop, whether I could see it or not. That thought was not as comforting as I had hoped it might be.
We headed back to the house, got cleaned up, and had watermelon for dessert. It was one of the best watermelons I had ever had.
Megan and Kylie babysat while Rob and I took a walk alone on the beach. We tried to get a photo, but it didn't turn out very well. It was pretty dark outside. The last time we went on a walk on the beach together was ten years ago in Daytona Beach when we flew down for Christy's college graduation. A lot has happened since then. I hope it's not another ten years before we get to take a walk on the beach again.
