summer road trip 2009

We had a really great time on our summer road trip 2009 through Florida. I am most at home in the Florida sunshine and must have some particular molecular happy gene that activates the closer I get to the sea.My baby sister Jennifer and her husband Eric, plus their two darling girls Ella and Anna live in Orlando. Jenny stays home with the girls and so I got to spend a lot of time with her for just under a week. I got a couple of runs in, a couple of good bikes and lots of walks. They were so hospitable and I hardly spent a dime while I was there.

Ben loved playing with baby Anna (18 months) and I enjoyed watching my son be so gentle and caring with a baby! Pat myself on the back for that one but for just a moment because the truth is that trait came from God…he was born that way, sensitve, gentle, kind.Brian and the older (three year old) cousin Ella bonded playing side by side computer games. Ella is crazy smart. Like, beyond the normal smart. She’s three—and not even three and a half—and can recite songs and books that have been read to her only once or twice. Her vocabularly is as big as mine. And she labels her feelings, “I’m feeling sad.” She observes other people’s behavior and can label that too, “Sometimes friends don’t feel like friends?” She said that when Ben and Brian were bickering.

Brian is my little willful one, likes to do what he likes to do. When he was younger he would try to get the others to do what he wanted and when they wouldn’t he would be upset. Now, he simply says, “Okay–your loss.” And he goes and does what he wants to do anyways, by himself. I was a lot that way. Naturally independent and witty, creative. We practiced piano while we were there and he is reading notes!

In Orlando, we went to the Orlando Science Museum and the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical GArdens. I went on long bike rides with the kids on a great bike path near their home. I was surprised Brian was able to go 4 miles on that little bike! Ben and I went on a second bike ride the next day…felt like we were “buds.” It was cool. I had to keep myself from flashing forward to him being a grown man!

Eric took the boys on a hike and they saw a skunk—and Eric got stung by a wasp. We played in the pool and Gypsy learned how to swim, watched the ducks in the next door pond and learned how to chase a tennis ball (rather than a little green styrofoam ball I had given her that Dr. Jenny informed me would be dangerous to her if she swallowed it!).

We drove one day over to Daytona and met Sally and Jack and Jaime for a day at the waterpark there.

On Friday, the boys and I left Orlanda and drove up the coast to Ponte Vedra Beach, stopping a couple of times to see the beach and play in the ocean. We spent three days in Ponte VEdra and spent our whole last day at the beach. It was awesome! Unfortunately Sally had to work but me and the three boys had fun. We took in a movie (Ice Age III) and bowling on the rainy first day. John cooked yummy yummy meals every night and we had a great visit!