Okay, you caught me, I’m lying. I totally backdated this blog post so it would seem like I was blogging from the beach. The truth is that I had great intentions of doing this, but I saw right from the beginning that this was probably not going to happen. This was mainly due to the fact that most evenings, if you drove by the townhouse and could see in, you would (a) see me in a beach chair directly in front of the front door (sometimes with it open),(b) see me sitting on a specific step on the staircase inside (in what was eventually known as our version of a “wi-fi area”), or (c) swinging from the balcony–all in an effort to obtain a wireless internet signal. The last one isn’t real, but there were a few times that I thought I was this desperate because of the NO INTERNET CONNECTION problem. Thank goodness for “beachykeen,” whoever he might be. Although spotty, his unsecured network was the only one I could count on being there. That being said, I found out early that my butt could not handle that staircase step long enough to write a blog post. Because we all know how long my blog posts can be.
Gosh, I’m really getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a little and say thanks to Pappy and some other members of the family, we now have a townhouse at the beach! Yay! The townhouse at Mexico Beach was purchased a few months ago and it was finally time to take advantage of this place and have a vacation! During the days leading up to the departure day I had feelings of excitement, stress, and sometimes pure dread. I went from thinking, “This is going to be the greatest trip ever!” to “Vacations are way too much trouble and I’d just rather stay home.” I’m glad I decided not to do this.
Because Griffin Choral Arts was performing the night we were planning to leave, Dan and I made the “we’re still new at this parenting thing” decision that it would be much easier on us if we drove IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT instead of waiting until the next morning. We had it all planned out. Leave at 10 p.m.. Brittain would fall asleep and stay that way the rest of the 5-hour drive. Arrive at the townhouse and immediately put her in bed. Unpack the car. Go to sleep. You see where this is going, don’t you!? Well, so part of this went as planned. The drive down was perfect. She slept the entire way. Dan drove and I had planned on snoozing along with Brittain, but I guess I was still experiencing an adrenaline rush from the concert, or perhaps I was that excited about the long awaited vacation, because I was wide awake the entire time. We finally arrived in Mexico Beach at 3:00 a.m. We parked and Dan carefully and quietly got Brittain out and took her directly upstairs to her bed. Nope! Wasn’t happening. Surprisingly, we both laughed. We figured that this was our vacation for goodness’ sake. It’s okay if she stays up a little while. I mean, it’s 3:00, she’ll have to go back to sleep at some point, right? This giddiness waned as the sleeping hours continued to disappear. It went kind of like this:
3:00 a.m. – Arrival with Brittain waking up and not wanting to go back to sleep.
3:45 a.m. – Crying. LOTS of crying because Aunt CC had woken up to come and greet us and then went back to bed. The going back to bed thing was not what Brittain had in mind. Fortunately, we were still in fairly good moods, so we tried laughing her out of it. I still have the image of Dan standing up and doing some kind of hilarious “jig” to get her to stop crying.
4:30 a.m. – Crying someone subsided, but still NO SLEEPING. Dan threatened to give her a half a Benadryl so that she would go to sleep. Yes, a half of an ADULT Benadryl. I informed him of the death of the two year old that would probably happen by giving her this kind of dose before taking the first “shift.”
5:30 a.m. – I am SO done with my shift after I had balanced my laptop on my leg in bed so that Brittain could watch Noggin videos. I walked in the room where Dan was sleeping and informed him that it was his shift.
9:00 a.m. – I wake up still very much tired, but much more awake than Dan is at this point. (He let me “sleep in”). We had the realization that it was NOT a good start to the trip, but we were at the beach and yay! this was going to be so much fun. We started all over again.
After eating breakfast and getting lotioned up, we headed to the beach where Brittain would be seeing and experiencing the sand and ocean for the first time! It was so exciting and I was ecstatic that Cecilia and Matt were there to also witness it. There’s just no way to describe the feeling from that day. It was wonderful being there with family and…SO much fun…and let’s face it, the homemade pina coladas that Cecilia made certainly didn’t hurt a thing! 
Her first steps on the beach!:
It was obvious on this first day how different a vacation this was going to be because we were only able to stay out for an hour or two so that the two year old wouldn’t get sunburned and hate us for the rest of our lives. But it was worth it.
She could hardly believe her eyes. For the rest of the trip, she referred to the beach as “The Big Sandbox.”:
I know. They kind of look like “my two gay dads”…but aren’t they cute?!:
On the first day Brittain experienced the ocean a little bit with her dad. She tolerated it, but it wasn’t her favorite part of the trip and she never did it again the rest of the 8 days we were there.:
Me, Dan, Brittain, Cecilia, and Matt all arrived on Thursday night. Mama and Daddy came down the next day. This was day 2 at the beach. Brittain felt that she was too good to walk on the beach. She had to either be rolled in her wagon or carried by someone on foot.:
Thank goodness that my sister and her husband are so organized! The most planning I had done for food was making sure I had some spagettios and milk for Brittain. Cecilia and Matt planned and brought food for the whole trip (which was nice since there really wasn’t a grocery store around there to speak of). Saturday night was our going-out-to-eat night, so we went to a restaurant called Toucans. Since we were all dressed in something other than our bathing suits, I took advantage of the opportunity and got some family pictures. Yes, I brought along the tripod and set it up (I’m sure we were quite a sight). Unintentionally, we timed it perfectly with the sunset:
This place was a parent’s dream because they had a playground set up right by the restaurant. This was wonderful for children who need something to do while waiting on the table to be ready (which she did) and also for children who wouldn’t last more than 30 seconds at the table (which she didn’t):
My favorite picture from the vacation:
