Florida Journal

So I cursed myself last week by saying to a friend that my kids hadn't been sick much this season and I wasn't real worried about them being sick for our trip. Well, Jacob woke up with a cough on Friday before we left, had a cough on Saturday when we travelled to Florida and by the time mom and dad arrived on Sunday night he had a temp and had thrown up. Yuk! Not fun on vacation. We considered taking him to a pediatritian down there, but he came around with some sneaky meds - the kid pukes at anything, so getting medicine in him is an art. A pediatrician's office in Florida did alert me to suppository fever reducer, so now I have that on hand too.

But, enough about sickness and more about the vacation. The kids did really well on the plane rides down to Florida. We had a layover in Houston since I wasn't willing to pay over double for our flights to have a direct flight. We had a slight hang up in Houston with a crew issue and then a light that needed fixing. Gavin and I wandered the plane while they made the repair. He fussed a little on that flight, but nothing like the 14 month old up in first class. I wonder how those first class travellers felt about a screaming toddler hanging out in their space. We got to our hotel late Saturday night, technically early Sunday morning. Gavin was way overtired by that point and had a hard time getting to sleep that night. He ended up sleeping in a king sized bed with me, so you can imagine how well I slept since we never do that and I was afraid that he would wake up at any moment and crawl right out of the bed. But, he slept until 9 am.

As Gavin and I were sleeping in, Jacob woke up with Fred and Jacob "wanted a new cabin". Fred told him he wanted to show him something cool and they went out onto the deck. This was the view from our room.

Jacob was impressed. They sat out there for a little bit and Fred asked if Jacob wanted to go back into the room or stay out and watch the ocean. He wanted to stay out, which is amazing if you know what a TV hound Jacob is. After observing for a little while, they headed down to the beach to check it out. I don't know that they ever made it to the beach without getting wet. This is Jacob after their first exploration. I believe they chased waves and Jacob may have tackled a few.

We spent the rest of the day recovering from our travels the day before. We played at the park at the nearby local beach and found a chocolate shake during our quest to find sand toys. We took Gavin down to the beach and he was a little afraid of the ocean. The first couple days it was pretty windy and the waves pretty big. This is Gavin trying to crawl up Fred and away from the waves.

That evening I picked up my mom and dad from the airport so they could join us on our vacation, or should we say - so they could watch the kids.

Monday was shot with Jacob being sick. I think Fred and him went swimming in the morning, but after that he was done. Poor kid, his fever spiked at 103 that night but he seemed to be better in the morning and we headed to Miami ("Your-ami?" Jacob asked") to pick up Adrea from the airport. I have a cousin who is going to med school in Miami. He is in MN doing rotations, but his wife is in Miami by herself, so we met up with Katie and went out to eat in the South Beach area of Miami and then walked down to check out the beach there. Tuesday evening Fred, Adrea and I participated in a resort run activity, remember the activities on Dirty Dancing (not the dirty dancing)?, well on Tuesday night it was Bingo. $10 per person to play for about an hour and pots ranging from $5 to $150. We won nothing, but it was fun.

Wednesday we went to the cafe that my dad had been frequenting for his morning coffee and our gang had breakfast there before walking over to the marina to feed the Jack fish. They sell frozen shrimp to feed these fish, but don't give very good directions as to where to feed them. "Anywhere on the property" is pretty vague and we ended up feeding half the shrimp to the crazy seagulls before finding the Jack fish. They were big and fast and fun to watch.

Then the pool fun began. Jacob loved swimming in the pool and more so jumping into the pool. Temps were in the mid-70s during the day and it was warm enough for us Minnesotans to enjoy the pool and very nice to enjoy poolside lounging. Adrea didn't miss many minutes of soakable sun while she was there.

Jacob and Fred

Me, Gavin and Fred

Gavin enjoyed the pool as well. He was a little hesitant at first, but then he loved it. He splashed and floated and laughed. He has what I think is eczema on his torso, which was not helped by the sunscreen and chlorine. We'll be visiting the pediatritian this week about that.

We did take a break from Wednesday's pool time to participate in the egg toss down on the beach. The same boy that won the big pot in Bingo won the egg toss tournament, so we decided to give up trying to win anything else.

Wednesday evening Fred and I took advantage of our fellow vacations (mom, dad and Adrea) and went out on a date. We had dinner at a Japanese steak house and then wandered around window shopping until we made room for cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. We were in the City Square of West Palm Beach and apparently the palm trees snow a couple times a night, but we made no effort to catch that. Snow? No thank you.

Thursday morning we headed out to get our Thanksgiving dinner from Winn Dixie - including the turkey, mashed pototoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing, gravy and rolls. We also made a stop at Perkins for the most important part - pies! We did whittle down our pie order to just French Silk and Peanut Butter Silk. Since lunch was hot (we thought we had to heat it) and we were hungry we ate at about 11:30. Then out to the pool for swimming and Scrabble.

The resort had a Scrabble board, so we were in heaven as we got to play Scrabble while enjoying the beautiful weather.

Friday morning mom and dad "got to go home" as my mom stated it. Lounging around a resort and watching our kids is apparently not their ideal vacation. They would rather be out doing stuff, so we really appreciated them hanging out with us and more so the kids as without them we would have been trapped inside the room while they napped and with their messed up schedules somedays there was always someone napping.

Mom and Dad on the beach

The rest of us enjoyed another gorgeous day by the pool and beach. We did try to venture out last night to find an arcade. As this was Fred's idea, he had found the arcade "Gamestop". It was at the Palm Beach Mall and was actually just a game store. Fine by me as I am not a video game player and Jacob was fine with the little ride on machines by the front door. So we found some food and headed back to the resort to try to get to sleep early as we had an early morning of flights on Saturday. But rest was not to be had as Gavin had finally come down with Jacob's yuk and was up a couple times during the night and Adrea and I were up at 3:30 am to get her to the Ft Lauderdale airport in time for her flight and early enough for me to get back to the resort to get my family and back to the Ft Lauderdale airport (about an hour from our resort in West Palm Beach).

We got home today at about 2. We had a very short layover in Houston on our way home, so we got our exercise in by running from one terminal to the next. The boys slept most of the way on the second flight. Jacob was asleep by take-off and Gavin fell asleep during take-off. They were both by Fred, so I had my own little vacation in a vacation.

It was great to enjoy the weather and water in Florida and we had a great time, but it is also nice to be home.