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.