Florida Day 1: Calm and Storms (February 8)

It's shortly before 7am here (shortly before 6am at home), and last night marks the first night that I haven't been worried about Kendrick on this vacation. He had a slight cough before we left, usually only when drinking and if I forgot to run the humidifier at night. Since arriving here, it has been constant at night and just unbearable. Yesterday we found a personal humidifier at Walgreens that has saved the day! Kendrick was still coughing occasionally, but it wasn't every half hour like the previous two nights. Hallelujah!

So I sit here feeling rested, with a cup of coffee while the condo is quiet and there are no little feet pitter pattering needing milk or diapers changed or anything else of me. It's calm. It's peaceful. The palm trees are swaying after a night of high winds and rain. I am sitting here near this lamp just journaling memories :)


Sunday was such a restful day, even if we didn't sleep all that fantastic the night before. We just hung out pretty much the whole day. The boys are in LOVE with the tiny little balcony here. They want to be out there first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.



We took the boys to the park in the complex...in shorts and t-shirts(!!). They LOVED it!

We pushed them in the swings for probably half an hour, which was just unheard of back home - even when the weather was nice. We had breakfast before and lunch after at the condo, and then worked on naps before too long.

After naps, we had to run to Kmart to pick up swim diapers and a few other things, then we went down to the pool and swam for an hour. The boys were BOTH just so blissful (although you couldn't tell from Kendrick's expression here).

We drive by this every time we head into town, and it is just gorgeous! I am just a tinge sad that we won't be chartering a boat this time around for some fishing and fun on the water, but it sounds kinda like a nightmare taking two little boys into the middle of nowhere on the ocean for a couple hours without the shore in sight. I keep reminding myself that one day it will be less chaotic and it's just for this short season in life that we are limited.

After the pool, and a non-nap for Cashel, we (being the crazy parents that we are) took two toddlers out for pizza! Upper Crust came highly recommended, so we had to try it out. And it was really very good! The boys? Yeah, they were not. I'm still fairly shocked that they didn't ruin anything with as squirelly and naughty as they were. I promise they didn't look so sweet and innocent, but there was just no way I was going to be able to take pictures, as it took all of Mark and I's strength to just keep the boys in their seats when they were writhing and screaming bloody murder. Eating out HAS to be the worst part of vacation when you have two toddlers.



We had promised the boys we would stop for ice cream on the way home, but they passed out as we were pulling out of the parking lot. Mark and I stopped anyway, and oh my goodness was this delicious! We got the special of the day and took home a half pint to share.

With the boys passed out and sleeping by 7pm, we cozied up in our pjs and watched a couple episodes of Scandal on Netflix before heading to bed for what will go down in history as "The Night of No Sleep". Kendrick was up at 12:30 and was coughing pretty much every half hour from then until 6am when I just gave up. Miraculously, he stopped coughing once we got up and was just running around making his cute little whispering sounds in awe of everything. Cashel was also very restless for Mark, since he hadn't even had a bite of pizza for supper (toddlers...ugh!) and was surprisingly starving and needed to eat and drink milk from 2-4am.