Summer Rental

This is why the picture of Jay from the last post cracked me up. After leaving one of the beaches - I think it was Fort Walton - Jay looked just like John Candy from Summer Rental. It is quite a work out walking uphill to leave the beach in all that sand while carrying a bunch of equipment.





Mom had a lot of questions in her last comment, which I hadn't done a very good job in the last post. I was trying to get all of the pictures on there.

1. The pictures of Jay and Cade in the streetcar and Cade in the suit - those were taken at Pensacola's Historic Village. They had some neat exhibits to go through. In the top of one of the museums they had a play area where the kids could dress up as French Solders from the French and Indian War. They had a fort and a boat and several other areas. It might have been Cade's favorite part of the trip.

2. Yes my burger had something green on it. At McGuires you could have a steakburger with any kind of topping you could imagine. They even had a peanut butter and a hot fudge burger. I opted for the tomato and guacamole, which I ended up wearing most of.

3. As for the pictures looking as imagined, yes they do. The only thing missing is sand. Sand that gets in places sand has no business being. Sand that I will be finding in my car the day we trade it off. Sand that I'm still finding in the bottoms of bags. All the times I dreamed of going on an beach vacation, I never imagined the sand. The sand has a way of bringing you back to reality quickly. Don't get me wrong, we had a great time, I just never dreamed sand could be so irritating.

Last of the Pictures

Sorry, these pictures are just all over the place. These were taken our last day in Pensacola and then Thursday on the way home. The beach pictures are of Pensacola Beach.


This beach picture is my favorite on from the trip

This picture just cracks me up, that's Jay in the orange trunks.

The picture of me with all the stuff on my shirt is one of Jay's favorites. Our last night in Florida we ate at MgGuires Irish Pub. I had a steakburger and ended up making a huge mess. Usually Jay is the one making dining errors, but that night it was me. It was very embarrassing, I had stuff everywhere. Luckily Cade fell asleep so I carried him out of the restaurant. He worked great as a 50 pound cover up. Finally in the parking lot I gave him to Jay, I was about to slip a disk.

The USS Alabama in Mobile

Jay's great uncle Ted and his wife Nan

We drove through Mississippi on Thurday and stopped to see Ted and Nan for a couple of hours. It was a nice visit, except I think Cade drove Nan crazy. Cade still doesn't understand that just because his grandparents stop what they're doing to listen to him - not everyone wants to do that. We've been working on not interrupting people, but so far we haven't made much progress.

Blue Angels and Dolphin Crusie

On Tuesday we got to see the Blue Angles practicing. It was facinating. For someone who hates to fly, I can't imagine what it would be like to be flying that close to another plane. Cade loved it. When they were ready to land all the kids got to stand by the runway holding a flag. It was a neat experience for Cade. The only downfall was that we had to give the flag back. That would've been a great souvenier for Cade to have kept. After watching the Blue Angels we went to the Naval Aviation Museum. They had different planes and things from the different wars. The boys both loved this place and could've spent all day there. I, mostly because I'm a girl, wasn't quite as excited about looking at planes. To my untrained female eyes it was a bunch of planes in one building - to the boys it was a huge play place.

That evening we went on a Dolphin Crusie. I had posted earlier about being a little afraid of going on this. I don't like the feeling of being in the middle of a body of deep water. As soon as we got on the boat, my fears were calmed. The Captain said we'd only be in 4-8 feet of water for the whole trip. Once we got started I also realized I could see land on either side of me. I was set. Of course we couldn't find any dolphin's at first. The Captain drove and drove and drove. Finally he found one. That one lead us to some more so we were able to see some. I was afraid we wouldn't find any - but we did. I didn't get any pictures of it because they were too quick and they were all over the place. It was neat seeing 3 or 4 of them jumping together at one time. Cade made a friend on the crusie - her name was Elizabeth and she was from Texas. She also is 6. The two of them talked non-stop. It was really cute.

Back Home

We made it home Friday afternoon about 2:30. We logged in 1,922 miles on this trip. The first 1,852 occurred without incident. Somewhere around 70 miles left to go a rock got thrown on my windshield. I'm getting ready to place some calls this morning to see about replacing a windshield in a G6. The way the tires and wipers have gone, this may not be a pretty phone call. But other than that, we had a really good trip. I'll give you some highlights of the first 3 days and some pictures today.

The line of the trip went to Cade of course. That happened on Sunday when we were in Gulf Shores. We were very careful about sunburn, especially the first few days. We didn't want to get a bad burn and be miserable the rest of the trip. We went to the beach in Orange Beach Sunday morning and then went to Gulf Shores that afternoon. When we got to Gulf Shores Cade and Jay had the following conversation.

J: Cade, I'm going to put your t-shirt on you to swim this afternoon. I don't want you to get burnt.

C: NO, I'll look like a dork.

J: No you won't, you'll look just like me. I'm wearing my t-shirt.

C: Yeah, I'll look like a dork.

Cade didn't wear a t-shirt that day, or any other day.



On Saturday we first got into town and headed to Pensacola Beach and proceeded to drive into one of the worst messes we've ever been involved in. I guess the Blue Angels were having a show that afternoon over Pensacola Beach. If we had known that, we wouldn't have gone. I guess the 3 mile bridge that had traffic at a standstill that connects Pensacola to Pensacola Beach should've been a warning, but it didn't register with us. When we got about half way across the bridge it started raining. Not just any rain but a monsoon type rain. When we finally made it to the beach we were on a little island with about 300,000 other people....in the rain. I guess at least one riot broke out that afternoon. There were sirens everywhere. Not exactly the welcome we had pictured when we planned this vacation.



The Blue Angels rescheduled their show for Sunday so we headed in the opposite direction. That's how we ended up in Alabama. The day was pretty uneventful. I will say that Alabama seems to have the best facilities at the beaches. The only downfall of the day was the jellyfish. There were a lot of them on Sunday. When we first got to the beach that day a little girl right beside up got stung. It put a damper on the beach for the rest of the day. Cade wouldn't go in past his ankles, which was fine with us. The last thing we needed was a 6 year old tangling with a jellyfish.

On Monday we traveled to Fort Walton and went to the Gulfarium. We got to see dolphins and sea lions perform. I find the sea lions to be more entertaining than the dolphins. They're very human like, which was amazing to me. That afternoon we went to the beach in Fort Walton. The water was very pretty, I know why they refer to it as "emerald" in their marketing brochures.

The Gulfarium

Fort Walton Beach

0n the road

I'm using jay's blackberry to update the blog. We are about 20 miles from Meridian Ms where we are planning on staying tonight. Things have gone well for today. We've made it farther than we thought. The only rough spot was 154 miles into the drive and Cade told us we were on his last nerve. He started watching a movie so things got better. We should be about 3 hours from Pensacola when we start out tomorrow. Keep us in your prayers, we've got some 2 lane roads tomorrowm

Our Vacation

I finally have an excuse to use another ticker - we are getting close to leaving on our vacation. Our plans are to leave on the 11th and drive to Pensacola, FL. We'll be there from Saturday through Thursday. I think right now we're wanting to drive to Gulf Shores for a day, go to an aquarium in another town in Florida (think smaller version of Sea World) and maybe go on a dolphin cruise. The jury's still out on the dolphin cruise - in theory is sounds neat. In reality being on a little boat in a vast amount of water will more than likely freak me out. (Leslie, I don't know how you've been able to go on so many cruises)

I know, we are probably the only family in America driving anywhere this year. For awhile I felt guilty about spending money to go on vacation when Dave Ramsey (christian financial guy) keeps whispering in my ear - get your debts paid off, snowball your payments, become financially free, etc. After I found out about Skyler, my attitude changed. In the whole scheme of life, Cade isn't going to care if we took this small sum of money and paid down on something. He is going to remember his parents taking him to the ocean. The three of us are healthy and we are going to enjoy going to Florida as a family this summer.