Tantalizing Travel Tidbits...

In my fantasy land, as if my life is so fabulously interesting, I know you have been waiting impatiently for all the glorious details of our recent spring break travels...hahaha...truth is, i just want to get them down to preserve the memories, and I like to pretend that my single digit followers just can hardly wait to read any of my witty details chronicling our personal lives! :)

---------------------------------------

It all started on a pleasant Friday morning as CJ and I went in and out, in and out, in and out of the house packing up the car. I am maintaining a calm, positive, and eager to depart mood, E and M were at school until noon, and G & S were trying to pack every belonging and the kitchen sink when I wasn't looking. G was toting around her beloved sidekick "bunny" despite my repeatedly ignored requests to "put bunny in the car or when it is time to leave we won't be able to find her!" Premonition at it's finest.

E & M get home from school, change, eat, and we all load in the car looking good for a 12:30 departure. "Mommy I need bunny!" Where IS bunny?? I feel the blood begin to boil in my brain. I jump out of car and do a quick run through of the house. No bunny. Steam threatens to escape from my ears and in a notsopleasant tone, I order everyone out of the car to scour the house for bunny. TO NO AVAIL!

I completely lose it and turn into Monster Mommy, doing a hideous display of "I told you so!"'s to Grace and involving everyone in my mental breakdown. That STUPID BUNNY!!! That thing ALWAYS goes completely missing at the worst times! I cannot tell you how many times we have torn the house apart looking for that thing!

After wasting over a half hour looking for it, I am in angry disbelief that the bunny I had watched her walk around with all morning long was NOWHERE to be found.

Fine. Get in the car, too bad for you! NO BUNNY!

Off we go, everyone angry, upset, moody, crabby, and totally disgruntled. Florida, here we come! Just like I had imagined.... :)

About an hour down the road, our neighbor across the street, who is taking care of our guinea pigs and cat, calls. "Hey, I think Grace left her bunny over here when CJ brought the pigs over. I just found it."...

...I was not aware she had gone over there when the pigs were brought, BUT APARANTLY CJ HAD BEEN AWARE!! Why oh why oh why had he not thought to look over there when we were hysterically looking through the house!!!! PERFECT ME would have KNOWN to look over there immediately! So now I had someone else to blame and be angry at besides Grace! (are you catching on that I am an ugly, sinful mess on most days??!!)

Neighbor offers to get it in the mail that afternoon, so it would be to the condo by the next day. Great! We would have bunny tomorrow! Deep breath. Moving on….

-----------------------------------

Saturday comes and goes. No bunny in the mail. Oh well, it got delayed, it will be here Monday.

-----------------------------------

Sun. Pool. Beach. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Sun. Pool. Beach. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

-----------------------------------

Monday morning 5:55am CJ gets a call from his friend. He has received a call from our security system that our alarm went off and they couldn’t get a hold of us.

CJ calls the security company, is told police came and did not see any signs of entry, the alarm company had reset the alarm and there had been no inside motion detected since they reset the alarm.

Later in the morning one of our neighbors came by to check the inside of the house.
(I am mortified, because I did not leave the house in good shape AT ALL, and then made it even worse by tearing it apart even more looking for bunny before we left.)
While he is checking out the basement on the phone with us, he says he hears an animal noise. Wait a minute, he hears a MEOW noise!

Hold the phone!

Slow dawning creeps over me!

OUR 100% OUTDOOR CAT MUST HAVE SNUCK IN THE HOUSE WHILE WE WERE IN AND OUT PACKING UP THE CAR AND GOT LOCKED INSIDE THE HOUSE WHEN WE LEFT!!!

There is no food, water, or litter box in the house for the cat and it has been locked inside for 3 days now!

I call our neighbor across the street who is feeding and watering the cat inside our garage and ask her if she has seen the cat or noticed any signs that it is eating. She sadly informs me that she has been so worried as there has been no sign of the cat and she’s afraid he may have run away like our other cat did a few weeks ago.

I inform her of the dreadful news that the cat got locked in the house 3 days ago and is probably half dead from starvation and thirst by now and it will be interesting to see what he has decided to use as a litter box in our home.

So she heads over to my messy, embarrassing house to look through every nook and cranny and closet and under beds to try and find the cat, to no avail. We get a call from the other n’bor who had been through. His wife and boys are worried about the cat and want to walk through the house. My inlaws call and ask if they should go look through the house to try and find the cat. No, NO, NOOOOOO!!!!!! Oh my goodness, strike me dead right now…There is dirty underware on the floor in the closets for crying out loud!! Crumbs on the floors that have probably helped the cat sustain life! Dust balls that probably roll around the floor playing with each other! Unmade beds! A ring around the tub! Have mercy on me and my messy ways, dear LORD!!!! WHY must I be found out! Talk about eating a HUGE slice of Humble Pie. I am who I am. You don’t have to like me. Yes, I am a sloppy housekeeper. Now you know, world.

Anyway, no one could find the cat, so they brought into the house the food, water, and litter box and as the days went by, there were signs that he was eating and using the litter box, he just refused to show himself when anyone came in.

---------------------------

Meanwhile, back in Florida…….I looked for the bunny in the mail again Monday afternoon. Nope. Another slow dawning crept over me. Do my inlaws have all the mail forwarded back to them in Georgia? Well, yes indeedio they do! So bunny arrived in Florida that Saturday, hung out at the post office for a day, and was sent back up to Georgia on Monday!

---------------------------

It was time to just have a good laugh……HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

--------------------------------

Where were we….ah yes. Sun. Pool. Beach. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

-------------------------

One evening we went out for ice cream and walked along the docks where the big, fabulous yachts park. Evie had asked me to hold her glasses so she could have her sunglasses on. I decided they were not my responsibility after it got dark enough to where she didn’t need her sunglasses and I handed them back to her and told her to NOT LOSE THEM and put them on. Why do I tempt fate like this??? Did I not learn anything with the bunny???

Sure enough next morning. “Mom, where are my glasses?” I don’t know, where did you put them? I don’t know. Canvas the condo. Nada. Let’s retrace our steps….doing that led us to the last memory of the glasses which was me giving them back to her and telling her not to lose them and to put them on. GRRRRR! CJ takes her back to where we had been the night before and they look all over. Nope.

We wait a day and she is having headaches from not having her glasses. She has been complaining for months now that her sight is blurry and needs new glasses anyways, so fine. I look up a Vision Works in Naples and off Evie and I head for an afternoon adventure of an eye exam and new glasses selection. Good grief…$300 later, we have spent a large chunk of our vacation spending money on replacing her lost glasses. I used the little-known parenting tactic called THREATEN to impress upon her the importance of not losing these new glasses for at least a year or more, if ever!

---------------------------

Other sweet memories from the trip…

* 2 mile runs with my big girl E every morning, who is such an athletic go-getter, that I could barely keep up with HER!

* doing a mile walk with Sarah after my runs

* watching my girls play so sweetly with each other in every combination Evie/Grace, Sarah/Mady, Evie/Mady, Sarah/Grace, Mady/Grace, Evie/Sarah….with so little to actually play with down there, they created their own fun and games and had such a good time together, often in pairs. It was heartwarming and made my mind wander again to that fantasy I have of a simple life on a country farm….

* soaking up the Holy Spirit as I gazed upon God’s beautiful creation, knowing completely that only a God who loves us so much would bother to create such a breathtaking world for us to enjoy.

* Learning a little bit more about myself and God, as I read Max Lucado’s In the Grip of Grace while laying poolside.

* Enjoying a kitchen and meal preparation free week as my husband took care of every kitchen and food duty the entire time we were there, and I just concentrated on laundry.

*Never wearing makeup, a bra, or using a hairdryer the entire week.

*the sunsets…breathtaking

*finding a 5 point starfish just laying there amongst the washed up shells one day on the beach…what a find!

*meeting up for a drink with a Georgia friend that was down there the first part of our trip

*meeting up for coffee with a Minnesota friend who arrived in Naples with her family at the end of our trip…so special!

____________________

We left on Easter Sunday morning. Before heading out we attending an Easter Sunrise Service on the beach…a 22 year tradition down on Marco Island. It really touched me, especially as we parked and started walking barefoot down the beach through the sand towards the service spot, along with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of others. There were even big boats that were anchored out in the ocean because they could hear the service with the great speaker setup they had. We laid down our towels and our beach chairs and enjoyed the service, celebrating our Risen Lord and Savior. But I was most moved to tears by all the many, many people there for Jesus!

------------------------------------

On the road again….Lessons in contentment and having a grateful heart:

Off we go on our 10 hour drive home. We were driving CJ’s parents SUV on this trip instead of ours (don’t ask), and I had discovered on my outing to Naples with Evie earlier in the week that the air conditioner was clearly not working in the vehicle. Well, it was 90 degrees for a good 6 hours of the trip on the way home and it is very difficult to have the windows open in a car going 80 miles an hour down a highway. We’d blast the vent air for awhile, then open the windows for a couple minutes and then close them and blast the vent air….

Here is the journey of my mind….

“I am going to FREAK OUT!!! This is RIDICULOUS!!! WHY couldn’t we have driven our own truck???!!!” I AM SO HOT! I am going to FREAK OUT! I AM FREAKING OUT! I AM SO HOT I AM GOING TO DIE! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!!! I AM MISERABLE!!”

Then, God had to get involved, knock-knock-knocking on my heart….“dear Shel, you are riding in a luxury vehicle, you have just left a lovely vacation where you stayed in a free condo in one of the warmest places in the whole country, you do not deserve any of this, yet you are one of a tiny, tiny minority that is fortunate enough to enjoy such things, why do you think you deserve air conditioning on this trip? Contentment, my child….I would like you to practice contentment and a grateful heart for the next 10 hours in this hot vehicle.”

Fine, then.

So I did. Every time I thought I just could not take it any more and wanted to curse in my mind anything and everyone that had a hand in putting me in this hot torture chamber situation I thanked and praised God for the comfortable luxury of the vehicle, the fabulous condo, the superb weather and scenery, and the special family time we just had. I kept repeating that I was content and thankful and refused to allow my mind to go to a dark, complaining place. And it REALLY helped. God is always willing to meet us when we seek after Him.

------------------------------------------

In order to distract me from the heat, CJ offered to get my computer set up for me with a special thingy that gave me internet access on the road. I got on facebook and proceeded to type my friend a long and lengthy novel about our week and things God was teaching me and just a million and one musings which took me 20-30 min to write. Literally 2 seconds before I hit the send button we drive through a dead zone and my internet access and computer shut down. Facebook does not have an automatic save feature, so when I got logged back on, my entire cathartic masterpiece novel to my friend was gone! FREAK OUT! (do you see how itchy my trigger finger always is on wanting to freak out! It is a personality disorder in me that I daily have to give over to God and try to restrain!) I grumbled and complained and threatened to throw the computer out the window until I had CJ good and sick of me.

And then God’s voice was back in my head telling me to get over myself again. It went something like this…”well aren’t you just so special that you deserve a laptop computer with internet access (that doesn’t meltdown and lose your writing that you are taking too much pride in) on your lap as you drive down the highway in a luxury vehicle (albeit with no a/c, but I digress) returning from a vacation in paradise. I want you to practice contentment and a grateful heart on this 10 hour drive in a hot, a/c-less, vehicle with faulty internet access and a dying computer battery.”

Fine, then.

So I did. I got over myself, put my computer away and made my thoughts be of the grateful and content variety. God is always willing to meet us when we seek after Him.

__________________________________

Whew! So we made it home about 9:30pm that night. We were REALLY looking forward to discovering where the cat had made his litterbox the first 3 days he was alone in the house unbeknownst to us. The house smelled ever so fresh when we entered! The girls took off to find him and he came to us right away. He seemed SO RELIEVED to see his family, but was clearly traumatized by the experience, and 2 weeks later is still not the same cat that he was before we left…he is much more needy and we have to let him in the house a lot more now and give him extra cuddles and love. First his brother runs away, and then 3 weeks later his family disappears and he gets trapped in the house with no food, water, or litterbox for 3 days. I am pretty sure we will be getting him a new companion soon. We just can’t help ourselves!

Anyway, I am sure you are dying to hear where he litter boxed….Well, poor Evie, her bed was his pee-pee spot. There was pee all over her bed! And his poo-poo spot was in the cushion crack of our leather sofa in the family room.

He also pee-pee’d all over a foam topper we put on our guest bed that was in a heap in the guest room…we threw that away.

It took me all week to get Evie’s bed cleaned up and remade. I desperately hope that the cat does not think that is his indoor spot to pee now when he comes in the house!

------------------------------------------------------

So, all in all, we had a great adventure and memorable Spring Break 2009! I am thankful, and I am content!

-------------------------------------------------------

So, was it a satisfying retrospective of our trip to read? That is if you even made it through the whole thing. My sister told me her husband stopped reading my blog because I was too wordy. Oh well. Here I am world! You don’t have to like me!

Be thankful and content today in all circumstances, dear ones!

:)