As soon as we arrived in Florida, we checked into our condo and got dressed for the beach.  Katherine's first impression of the beach was complete amazement, although (spoiler alert) the beach experience that Disney depicted wasn't exactly accurate.  Initially, she loved loved the sand between her toes but wasn't sure about the constant uncontrollable motion of the water.  In fact, over the next couple of days she spent her time going back and forth from the sand to the pool.  Jason was a real trooper (pun intended) with taking her to the pool while I stayed on the beach. 

Hello there, dear readers.

I feel like it's been a while, although I've probably gone longer than this in between posts.  It just feels like it's been a long time because we've been jet car-setting for the past ten days.

We just got back from Katherine's first official vacation, where we traveled to Florida's "emerald coast."  It was our first trip by ourselves (just the 3 of us), and Katherine's first trip to the beach.  She had been studying up on the topic by watching Teen Beach Movie and Teen Beach Movie 2, and was convinced she would surf and dance and sing on the beach just like the main characters in the movie (at least she's stepped up off of Frozen for the moment).  Our trip was full of fun, unexpected characters, and lots and lots of sand.

Did anyone get in the ocean?  Was there surfing/dancing/singing on the beach?  Did someone poop their pants in the car, twice?  Did someone try to party all night on more than one occasion?  I'm ready to give you all of the details:

We left St. Louis at the conclusion of Katherine's gymnastics class on Friday (like, literally left town right when class was over), with a lunch stop in Cape Girardeau on our way to Kennett.  We stayed the night with Jason's parents Friday night, and Saturday we decided to drive down to Mississippi to break the trip up a little more.

So, off we went on Saturday.  Katherine had been complaining of tummy trouble Saturday morning, but refused to sit still long enough to focus on her "job."  I guess riding in the car loosened her up because about 30 minutes into the trip, we heard a few muffled sounds from the back seat followed by an unpleasant smell.  When we asked, Katherine proudly announced that she had pooped.  We stopped off in a sketchy interstate town in Arkansas so that I could change Katherine's diaper.  Unfortunately, she had filled her diaper and then some.  Poop everywhere.  All over her, her clothes, luckily not her carseat.  I changed/cleaned her on a towel in the front seat of the car because I wasn't able to get her inside without getting it everywhere.  An entire package of wipes later, I had her cleaned up.  We managed to locate her suitcase in the backseat just enough for me to grab her a random outfit.  I threw her soiled clothes in a plastic bag (that luckily I had packed for just an occasion), and proceeded to get her dressed.  As I was placing her in her carseat, I noticed her clean clothes now had smears of it on her.
"Her clothes have poop on them again!  Where is this coming from?!" I said to Jason, who had been helping with the clean-up efforts.  We inspected her.  No sign of where the mysterious extra poop was coming from.  I looked down to see that....yep.  It was coming from me.  My shirt had poop all down it.  I guess in my haste to get her cleaned up, I had gotten myself poopified.  My suitcase was not coming out of the car without completely unloading the whole thing so I decided to go to the gas station bathroom to clean up.  Yep.  No soap in the bathroom.  Anywhere.  I mean, I can't.  Whatever.  So, I pretty much bathed myself in a bottle of hand santizer and off we went.  Again.

We made it to Jackson, Mississippi where we were going to stay for the night.  As we got Katherine out of the car to eat dinner, we noticed that she had pooped again.  And again, had destroyed her clothes.  I already had dried poop on my shirt so, what the hell.  I paraded myself and Katherine through the McAlister's Deli dining room to the bathroom, where we again cleaned up and changed clothes (but not before I ran out of wipes).


After dinner, we headed to our hotel for the night.   Katherine was stoked about her first hotel stay and couldn't get enough of the elevator rides.  She also enjoyed the hotel pool, where she floated and jumped until almost 10:00 p.m. when she was forced out by her mean parents resulting in a two-year-old fit fest.  She also refused to go to sleep and proceeded to jump and climb in her make-shift pack-n-play bed.  She was wound up and nothing was bringing her down.  At a little after 11:00 p.m. we got her out of her bed and put her in ours to keep her calm, which worked because after about five minutes in our bed, she went right to sleep.  So another first for Katherine, getting to sleep with mommy and daddy.

The next morning, we were at it again after a quick breakfast in bed.  We made our way south through Mississippi and Alabama while Katherine watched Despicable Me's 1 and 2 over and over again.  It's been so long since I drove through the south, that I forgot how much I miss it.  I miss the small towns and the friendly southern accents.

We arrived in Florida in just enough time to check-in to our condo and get dressed for the beach.

And....that's where I'll stop for now.  Tune in for Part 2 where I'll answer the question of "How many people from St. Louis can we meet in one condo?"

As I mentioned in the previous post, we're back home after a mini vacation to Branson (read about last year's trip to Branson here), and still recovering from a few days of colds and travel.  Once I got out from under the huge pile of laundry that always accompanies a family trip somewhere, I was eager to get back into our normal routine.  

{We did not stop to pose in front of a beautiful creek with water fall.  We stopped to pose in front of a green screen at the request of the Dixie Stampede ushers.  You can't really go to a cheesy dinner attraction without a cheesy souvenir photo.}

My college friends and I had a saying when we saw a car full of old people (or any car, really) driving slow.  We'd say they were "looking for Branson."  If you've ever been to Branson, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.