20 Things You Didn't Know About... 2010 Destin Vacation

1. If you stand really still and quiet, right where the waves are breaking, you can catch "really big fish" (per Cooper).

2. "Only daddy can catch the really big ones."

3. A year makes a really big difference: Sam didn't eat the sand, Kendall preferred the ocean to anything else, and Cooper became obsessed with the Wii instead of obsessed with the pool.

4. No matter how much they appreciate the effort, your fellow roommates will still make fun of the fact that you planned a weekly menu and shopping list. Every. Day.

5. Tiny miracles DO happen. Like, for example, our children never got the super-contagious stomach bug that ran through the condo like a California wildfire.

6. The World Cup overrides everything. And I mean, everything.

7. There can be tar balls "in Destin" but they will probably only be in one area. Like, our area. And when I say "area" I mean, the 20 yards directly in front of our beach.

8. We will never bring a tailgating tent to the beach again. Year 1 w/ the tent found it stolen after the first night. Year 2 found it caught in a wind storm while I was alone on the beach. It almost took out an elderly woman's head and a nice drunk man down the beach had to catch it for me and hold on to it for dear life while we waited for the wind to die down. His child was screaming out of fear of all the things flying through the air and his drink never left his hand, but neither did my tent, so maybe I shouldn't complain? There will be no Year 3 tent stories.

9. You can almost always bribe your children to smile. However, the price is HIGH and the smile is BRIEF. And, most likely, fake.

10. Knock-Knock jokes are HILARIOUS. Even without a punchline. For example, "Knock-knock! Who's There? Peanut!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Get it? Yeah, no, us either.

11. Even nice, well-mannered, polite men with good morals can cheat at board games.

12. Apparently it is very much not normal to wash your vegetables with soap and water.

13. If your shrimp smells bad, return it immediately. It is possible that the guy at the fish counter might very well admit that "I knew we had a bad batch of shrimp. I tried to tell Management but they wouldn't listen." Then go find a new place to buy your fish.

14. It's possible to hear the bulk of your nation's news from other condo residents while swimming with your kids in the pool. I never laid eyes on a newspaper, a news broadcast or so much as the Today Show the entire week. I even missed the record-breaking Wimbledon match, which I even had 3 days to catch a part of.

15. The ocean has a "deep end" and a "shallow end." According to a certain 3 year old. For the record, the deep end was her favorite. As well as the "wave pool" in the deep end.

16. We unofficially spent WAY less money than last year on groceries. I would like to believe it was thanks to my menu and organization and had nothing to do with the fact that at least 2 people were sick all day everday after Tuesday.

17. We are fairly certain there was at least one person napping at all times of the day, everyday when you include naps for kids, naps for adults, sick children, and sick adults.

18. A 20 ounce Gatorade is officially the LAST thing you should give your 3 and 5 year old to drink on a 10 hour car ride.

19. Basically, we've learned at least one thing the past 4 years of this vacation: Have No Expectations. It will be wonderful, regardless of what you're hoping for. When I say "expectations" I'm really talking about family portraits on the beach in cute, matching outfits.

20. No matter how difficult the week can end up being, you still miss the good parts: the beach, the pool, the relaxation, the family time. Even the sand in my bed gets a little missed after we're home.

2010 Vacation -- The Latest Victims

Well, I wish I had better news to report. The Bug has claimed it's last victims of the Webb Family Vacation of 2010. Emily fell quickly this morning and poor Kori was able to enjoy the pool for a bit and some lunch before she fell victim. And so far she's gotten the worst of it, too. :(

There isn't too much to tell today. Thursday found Chip and I able to keep food down and Kali was back to her old self shortly after breakfast. There wasn't much beach time today thanks to those stupid tar balls and we all "enjoyed" getting balls thrown at us, jumped on top of and splashed in the face no less than 800 times at the pool since it was so crowded.

Mimi had the brilliant idea of getting some crafts at Michael's today to keep the kids busy when we couldn't be in the pool. The Wii has done an excellent job at that same thing, but Cooper's eyes are almost permanently glassed over from it. However, I now know that his next sport will most likely be jousting. Or table tennis. Or racing go-karts.
Kali and Kendall found a way to pass the time after dinner.

Please continue your prayers for those that are still ill and for the ones who have remained healthy (including our own 2 kids). We are hoping for a healthy and fun last day on vacation just before a hopefully uneventful drive home.

2010 Vacation -- Worst Wednesday Ever

I didn't "forget" to blog yesterday. I simply couldn't find the time between the wonderful day we had and the stomach bug that arrived shortly after dinner. I suppose we should have seen it coming. I mean, if you label something "Best Monday Ever" there is only one direction your fun can go in from there! Sam was the first victim, on the drive down+, but has been seemingly fine since. After bed, I also came down with The Bug. So far, everyone that was sick last year has stayed healthy this year. There are only a select few that weren't sick last year and have remained healthy again this year (so far). While I'm feeling better, Chip is still not at the top of his game and has welcomed a slight fever to his day. Please say a quick prayer for the rest of the Condo Crew to stay healthy! Especially the youngin's!!

Here are pictures of happier moments...

If she's not in the water, she's happiest in the shade.

I think I posted almost the exact same video last year. What can we say? The kid obviously loves to jump waves. And he refused to smile for any pictures today or yesterday.

And, to top it all off...today around 4:00PM, a rather large tarball-filled wave came riding onto the Destin beaches. OUR beach, to be precise...

Some sad, mad beach bums and their new enemies, the tar balls.

Tar Ball Photos Courtesy of Emily Webb @ www.skybirdstudio.com (where I doubt you'll find more pictures of tar balls, so don't get excited about that!).

2010 Vacation -- Best Monday Ever

I feel like singing "this is the song that never ends, 'cause it goes on and on my Friend..." If you don't know it, it repeats the same verse over and over again without change (unless you're me and you at least attempt to change the tune a bit out of boredom). However, that song tends to get boring while this vacation does not. Each is like another, for sure. I could be fooling you...I could be showing you pictures of Sunday all day just so I didn't have to take my camera out the rest of the week. I think you all know me better than that by now, though.

Monday was pretty darn nice. We built a sand castle (actually, it was a "monster truck sand castle garage), played in the ocean, caught fish and sand fleas, and of course swam. A lot. The boys played a plesant round of golf and it was all in all, a wonderful day.
They're gonna put this on a "Life is Good" t-shirt next week.

Kendall's been swimming. Plenty. For those of you keeping tabs, she had taken a swimming hiatus after a relatively unfriendly swim teacher got a hold of her. She has since picked her habit back up. What I really wanted to do is stream all the videos together to make one long one of her swimming back and forth. And back and forth. I tallied it all up though to equal about 5 minutes of 10-20 second videos. Even the greatest of grandparents would tire of that!

We've awoken to waves-o-plenty this morning thanks to a storm just barely west of us. Luckily for us, everything, including the current which somewhere out in the deep ocean holds all that oil is heading westward today. It shall be another wonderful day. Wish you were here...

2010 Vacation -- Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day (well, a day late). I would have blogged last night but we had a rousing game of Win, Lose, Or Draw -- Dads vs Moms going on and there was just no time for anything else.
Yesterday found us at the beach. And the pool. Then the beach. Then the pool. There was some rest time in there somewhere, just not a lot of it. Of course we celebrated Father's Day with, well, with serious beachtime and some good old fashioned red meat later on. And, Mimi, Emily and I gave the daddies our gift of winning Win, Lose Or Draw after all the kids were in bed.

Yes, I realize this picture is off-centered but it's because he was laughing at me and I was laughing at him and I didn't care much about the camera because my nephew was laughing at me!

No! This is NOT a forced smile. I'm SURE he is NOT thinking "good grief MOM."

Daddy's BIG catch! We caught 6 fish yesterday. Yup, with that little net. So, Mimi promptly visited Walmart last night to get bigger nets. Bigger nets = bigger fish...right?

Almost adorable. If it weren't for my sweet little boy acting like a really annoyed teenager!

Surf's Up, DUDE!

We enjoyed a light show last night provided by Mother Nature. The complete goofball you hear at the end of the video is, um, some weird girl we met from, um, nextdoor. Yeah, that's it. The backstory is this: Terry comes and tells us to watch the light show outside during a wild storm. We watch. I bring my video camera. We wait. Not much happens...until I turn my camera off. So, the giddiness you will hear is because it took me about 30 minutes to get anything close to this.

Happy Monday!

2010 Vacation -- Day 2

Day 2 found everyone sleeping a little later (I regrettably didn't get a picture of Cooper and Kendall sleeping in the same bed for the first time ever, and actually falling asleep!) and there was no 6AM pool session. However, we did little else besides swim today. Well, we did eat a couple of meals and drive another uneventful trip to Destin, but other that, we pretty much swam. Oh, and packed. But mostly swam.

Up until this day I think I thought I would be the first Mommy of a little boy that would never have to deal with reptiles of any kind. Around 10AM this morning, I became very, very wrong. They found a very small and very injured frog (Uncle Phillip had just been weedeating, but we aren't positive what happened exactly). Cooper tried his hardest to make the little frog as comfortable as possible. BLEGCH.

The pink was all washed out by this morning!

Kori and her boyfriend, Dalton. I mean, he's adorable and all (and super sweet to my kids!), but saying the words "Kori's boyfriend" still kinda makes me want to throw-up just a little bit.

Well, we just finished watching the nightly news where they promptly told us about "the first tar balls" washing onto shore in our area today. Nothing like "perfect timing" for us Webbs.

2010 Vacation - Day One!

You may see "Day One" and then never hear from me again until Day 10, or even well after we get home. Alas, as always, my intentions are good.

Our vacation got off to a rocky start, but only about 3 weeks ago. While swimming with Mimi, Cooper says, very excitedly, "Mimi, only 14 days until we go to the beach!" Mimi very politely thinks about this statement for a few minutes until she realizes that no, in fact, we have 21 days. The rest, as they say, is history. For six months, I've had our vacation week wrong. We were going to shut down the office and 2 staff members planned elaborate vacations. So, instead of enjoying a lazy week taking my time packing (honestly one of my favorite OCD activities) all week while at home with the kids, I worked. All day, everyday until we left. The good news was that we didn't have patients scheduled on Thursday. What is usually a 3AM arrival at Kara and Phillip's turned out to be a 5PM arrival since we were able to drive during daylight hours.

The carride was quite uneventful. We had 6 pitstops (only 2 of which were potty-only stops), stretched our legs in the Chick-Fil-A play area and enjoyed the Montgomery Zoo, our alltime favorite pitstop ever. The total trip time was exactly 10 hours. Last year we missed the Montgomery Zoo because a) it was closed at 1AM when we drove through Montgomery and b) Kendall was throwing up on the way home. We arrived in Daphne just in time to see Kali smash a few winners at her tennis lesson.

Our first full day found us in the pool at 6:30AM. This is after we drug the kids out of the pool at 10PM the night before. After a long time in the pool, an intense World Cup game, a surprisingly inexpensive trip to Walmart and a 30 minute "rest time," the real fun began. While Chip, Kori and Cooper didn't take pictures of their haircuts and trip to the double-decker Bass Pro Shops, they have lots of stories. I took plenty of our afternoon...

Kali was so sweet to invite Kendall to a birthday party with her. This, my friends, was the greatest, girliest party ever. At the local Beauty School, the girls got their hair done in elaborate updo's and their nails done. In this picture, Kendall only looks upset because she can no longer see them working in the mirror. This girl was in heaven!

Don't go searching for your spectacles. That IS, indeed, pink hair.

The finished product and blissful happiness for at least one little girl.

They topped it off with a cookie cake with blue and yes, pink, icing. Not pictured: Kendall putting the icing on her lips like lipstick. Foreshadowing?

We all met up at the gym to watch Kori tumble a bit. The others enjoyed the bouncy tumbling track. A lot. Kali is all smiles as the jumps through the air!

I don't have much to say here. I don't know what she's doing, don't know what it's called and I can only assume this is pretty darn close to perfect. I can say this: impressive.

Stay tuned (if you are that bored): we leave for Destin later today and will hopefully find pristine beaches and beautiful clear water. Otherwise we're dragging the condo's water hose down to the beach to use with sprinklers to keep cool.

Water Day. Literally.

Summertime, for the Wild Webbs anyway, has always been filled with water days. We have Water Day at school, play in the baby pool in our driveway (Redneck Riviera style), swim and skip rocks in the river in the mountains, have water-themed playdays, water fun fights in the yard and the list goes on. Never have we had a summer such as this, though. For the first time ever, both our kids can swim and love the water. We have to beg them to get out. They will always, always choose "no stories at bedtime" if it means we can swim for "just a few more minutes". I'm pretty sure they'd skip a visit to the World of Cupcakes or America's Largest Ice Cream Factory if it meant they could have 5 more minutes in the pool. I now understand all these parents that I've always judged in the past...you know, you folks that let your 4 and 5 year olds stay up until 10PM? Well, I admit...I have always judged you. Until now. And rest assured, if I see you in Walmart at 11PM with your 1 year old, I'm still judging you. But if you have your preschooler in the pool at 9PM, I'll more than likely be jealous.

Sam isn't quite sure he's comfortable with his Mommy throwing him like a limp piece of seaweed. Luckily, his Daddy is there to catch him before he goes under. Never fear, I'm sure he'll be right there with the rest of the Webb kids in no time.
Daddy and Cooper...one of the few times Cooper wasn't swimming entirely by himself. And those goggles? They come on before the sunscreen and get taken off just before the bath. No exceptions.

Cooper's newest favorite activity? Why, it's flying through the air, with the greatest of ease (and, naturally, posing for the camera while doing so)!

Kendall isn't quite as confident as Big Brother, but she sure loves to swim around on her noodle or kickboard. Her newfound love for jumping off the diving board has baffled us beyond belief, but we love it.

This is what Cooper looks like everytime he goes under. It doesn't matter if he was thrown in, did a painful bellyflop, or is struggling to get to the side of the pool...he comes up ALL smiles.

Pray for us this week...we're attempting Year 4 to Destin with a sidetrip to Daphne first. We have been on the "countdown to see Kori and Kali" for what seems like forever now. We would especially appreciate your prayers on the homeward bound leg of the trip where we will attempt to end our 3-Year Someone is Throwing Up In The Car On The Way Home streak.

When I Grow Up...

Well, I survived my first UT course since 1999. My Fundamentals of Digital Photography I class came to an end last week and I couldn't be a more confusing combination of elated and sad. I really grew to enjoy the folks in the class and by the last night I couldn't decide if I was excited that there wasn't another class until the fall or completely devastated. On the last night, we had to present 4 photos we had taken since the class began. Truth be told, I had a really difficult time deciding. Not because I had 400 to choose from, but because I just couldn't find a single one I loved and that I thought the instructor would remotely like. Alas, I'm not one to turn in nothing, so here's what I decided on. I'll let you know what I and some of my classmates liked about these photos. There probably isn't enough room on blogspot or my computer to tell you what my instructor didn't like about them!

The high points of this are the blue "natural" frame around the photograph, the slowed-down water and the fact that the main subject is not centered.

The coloring is a little green here, but unfortunately so is her shirt, part of her dress and 95% of the picture. We like that a few of the flowers, Kendall and the ladybug are all in focus with an otherwise super blurry picture.

I'm finally learning to use some flash in an appropriate way and it actually shows in this picture. For once. It's the only photo I have so far with good use of flash!

My favorite. I liked the lines in this, Cooper isn't centered and it definitely shows where he's headed, not where he's been. I love that I caught him on his toes on the edge of the diving board, mid-motion! He was clearly having a horrible time! ;)

Thank you to all of you who kept asking about my class, asking what I was learning and what I was enjoying about it. It means a lot that so many people care about my hobby! And a super-big thanks to Chip who forced me to finally do it by getting it for me for my birthday! I just don't think he realized that you have to take 7 classes to get your "UT Photography Certificate" which is my new goal in life. Here's to Happy Pictures...

May Means Play!

One of my favorite days of the summer is always the Carver Play Day/Water Day. We can't get there fast enough and the kids have to be literally drug away by the collars of their newly-dry change of clothes as the moon is on the rise. This year was no different. Well. It was a little different, there was no embarrassing fall in the wet grass by a certain mother of two young children named Cooper and Kendall. I managed to stay almost completely dry this year, but for a stray (or not so much) water hose or sprinkler. The tradition is a shrimp boil and homemade ice cream, sprinklers, slip-n-slides, lots of juice boxes, and an amazing amount of laughter and happy squeals. The newest tradition, I hear, is Amanda's peanut butter cookies. Although, I know a few people that won't be able to live going a whole 12 months before the next batch.

Kendall quickly claimed the blue swing as hers about 21 seconds after our arrival.
She did manage to slip away (or, be pryed away when baby LK wanted a turn) to play with Baby C for a bit.

Lila Kate enjoyed her first Carver Water Day and managed to stay dry for her Year 1. I have no doubt next year will be completely different.

Baby Will catches a glimpse of his daddy pushing Kendall on the swing and I'm not so sure he liked it.

I love this! My sweet Cooper pushes a gloriously happy Baby C in HER swing.

Barrett takes full advantage of the pool at the end of the slide. Fear was completely lost by all somewhere between September of last year and this Play Day!

As you can clearly tell, not much has changed. The fact that these two go to school together, play tee-ball twice a week together and have multiple play dates on a weekly/monthly basis does not keep these two from adoring each other. Their arranged marriage is already working out better than some real ones!

The Slip-N-Slide. Never was there something more appropriately named.

Such handsome young men! But I can't help but look at this photo and see two upcoming kindergarteners!!!

Another Water Day Success Story. I'm bound and determined to be better at blogging. We have lots to take pictures of, like the last few tee-ball games, pool time (complete with underwater pictures!), an upcoming beach trip and much, much more!! See you then!

Pomp and Circumstance

The song Pomp and Circumstance reminds me very much of 15 years ago... my high school graduation. I played that song four years in a row in orchestra and I could probably play it on the violin today if I had to. Up until April of this year, I thought it was going to be another 13 years before I heard that song again. That is, until May 18th when I watched my precious little 5 year old (well, 4 years, 364 days old, not quite FIVE) walk across and accept his preschool diploma.

Apparently he is quite happy that he just graduated! Aren't we all?
Cooper, his BFF Brody, and precious Mrs. McCulloch who retired after 50+ years teaching. I hope Cooper and Brody won't grow up being offended that she retired at the end of their year with her!!

I am embarrassed to admit that this photo was taken after my photography classes started. One word: UGH.

Could he be any happier??? And have you ever seen anything cuter in a cap and gown?

Cooper receiving his diploma from Mrs. Judy!