On the road again

Last week my family travelled south again. My parents are celebrating their 50th birthdays this year, and my mom surprised my dad with a week at the beach. And then she invited all of the kids to join them. My mom didn’t tell him that we were coming in an effort to keep him from cornering us to extract the details. Too bad that didn’t work--keeping a secret from him is nearly impossible. A few weeks ago he and Seth were outside together talking. After about an hour Seth came rushing into the kitchen yelping, “He’s pumping me for information, I can’t take it!”

He’s stoic and difficult to read, so we may never know whether he figured the whole thing out or not. My mom told a few *white lies* and we think he was surprised to see us (and hopefully happy). We had a fantastic time together. Here’s the week in pictures…


Here’s a picture of our whole family. Yes, my parents have four daughters. I don't know if my dad was a patient man before children, but spending 20 years with five females certainly made him patient. Take notice of all the grandchildren that are boys, it seems the only way we can add girls to our family is by adoption. I guess God is rewarding my dad for his patience by giving him so many rowdy grandsons.



I wish I could write that our trip ended as we expected, leaving Florida and heading back home. It didn’t though, and I’ll leave that for my next post. Ba ba ba bahm, ahhh, a good cliffhanger.

I am going on vacation because....

1. I've lost count of how many days it has been since I have seen the sun.
2. Yesterday my four year old locked himself in the bathroom. My oldest thought it was so funny that we should be videotaping, so he snapped this photo. I spent half an hour in this pose before finally disassembing the knob and getting the door open. This is NOT the first time this child has done this (just the first time in this house).
3. We have a cat. We love our cat. Our cat had an upset stomach recently. Need I say more?
4. My daughter woke up at 2 am and peed in her bed. This is highly unusual and obviously I forgot to make her potty before bed.
5. My calender has at least 4 appointments or obligations on it everyday for the last three weeks of March.
6. My son decided he hates subtraction with a passion. His distaste is strong enough that he's made me question whether anyone ever needs to learn how to subtract. Not good.
7. My loving, caring, busy, in-laws didn't schedule their time share week early enough and got stuck with the first week of March. I guess we must seem frazzled, because they thought a week at the beach would do us good. God love 'em!

We had freezing rain yesterday, and right now snowflakes the size of quarters are pouring down. I don't care, because I'm loading my summer things, my kids, grabbing the hubby, and heading south!