We got back from our trip to the beach yesterday morning at 4 am. Traveling without the kiddos coming back made it possible for Josh and I and the in-laws to drive straight through. We left at about 6:15 am Oklahoma time, so that's about 22 hours on the road. It was a long day but it was so nice waking up in my own sand free bed yesterday morning at about 10.
On the way out we had a little bit of this:
That headless red shirt is Josh, the headless gray one is Jeff, Dan or Papa Dan as the kids like to call him is supervising in the white shirt, and my father-in-law aka Pop is in the green. The car is my sister's husband's car and that would be a flat tire. Fortunately we were close to civilization and a Sam's Club and two tires for $350. We took all the kids from their car and headed on, and they were not the first ones to the beach house.
Then we got to have alot of this sort of thing. Caeli, Paige, Torie, Parker, Jenna, Zoey, Cameron, Hailey, Zach, Carson and Hannah all at the beach one evening we were there. Heaven. These kids were FANTASTIC, it was such a fun week with all of them.
And then our trip home Saturday, we had a little of the above, a flat tire in Memphis. I blame Josh and the scary looking gas station he stopped at. We ran over something that put a big ole hole in one of the tires of the mini van. The totally awesome mini van. I am not a huge fan of Chrysler, but the Town & Country van we rented was loaded. It had about 80 miles on it when it was picked up and had satellite radio, DVD player, leather seats and about every option you could get in a mini van except a bathroom and a refrigerator.
Luckily we were in Memphis not far from the airport when we got the flat tire and the wonderful people at Alamo switched it out for us. We had to ride the last 500 miles without leather seats, but we suffered through. It was quite a pain to unload all our crap, and all the extra crap we were transporting due to the lack of children, but it was worth it. We only added a little more than an hour to our time.
So the kiddos are in Virginia at Auntie Linda's house for the week, Josh is going to pick up the doggies in Grove tonight, and my house is still clean from our cleaning lady that came the Thursday before we left. Life is good.
I even got my baking on yesterday, a fresh loaf of bread, batch of granola, homemade biscuits for brunch, and homemade brownies for Josh and I to munch on this week. (I didn't have enough butter for cookies and we are going to see how long we can survive without going to the store. The dwindling supply of toilet paper might make that sooner rather than later.)
I could seriously get used to seeing this on a regular basis. I wonder if you live close to the beach if you just take it for granted after a while. Makes me sad to think that that might happen.
We were so happy this year that the kids loved the beach. When we went a few years ago, we spent a lot of time at the pool. This year the kids went to the pool that was in our neighborhood a little bit but the rest of the time they were out jumping waves or building sand castles.
Paige and Caeli, they look a little worn out here. Jumping waves is hard work.
