Easter and Such

Rewinding a bit . . .

The Thursday before Good Friday, some dear friends arrived, having completed an absolutely epic car journey to get here from our old town in North Carolina.  (We really are quite far from everywhere down here.)   We greeted them with a couple of glasses of bourbon on ice.  In short order their five year old daughter was tucked into the trundle bed up in the boys’ room, and all three big kids (plus one little baby, in his own crib) were sound asleep.  The parents did some catching up and had a few glasses of wine/beer, and then we also tumbled into our own beds, ready to start a three day weekend.

I took Friday (mostly) off.  I had to stay on top of email as always, and answered a few “hot hot hot” requests, but for the most part stayed off the grid.  After letting the kids run around the house for an hour or two, we took the whole safari to the beach in our car.  The car we have was just barely big enough to carry us all, so we rode together, rubbing shoulders and with feet on top of beach gear.  It’s not too far – took us a little over an hour on that day, due to traffic – and once we arrived at 11, I was glad we had enough snacks and juice to power us through the lunch hour.  We set up an umbrella, a few towels and camp chairs, and a cooler with grapes, juice boxes, waters,and a couple of bottles for Craig.  Then the children grabbed their little boogie boards and commenced being totally thrashed by the crazy waves.  Normally the Gulf beaches are pretty tame, but on this day the waves were kind of insane, and all three kids got tumbled many times, snouts full of salt water.  Savannah, our visitor, by far the smallest in stature of the three, really taught my boys how to be unstoppable.  I’m pretty sure that if she hadn’t been there, getting rolled hard by waves and then leaping back into the surf without pause, Jack probably would have given up crying very early on.  But he observed her toughness, and it made him tougher – he occasionally would remark that he was a little scared when he was tumbled by a wave and didn’t know which way was up, but then he’d leap back in.  Liam was less into the swimming – probably already coming down with an ear infection which would hit him full force a couple of days later.  He mostly played with sand toys – which is why I always drag a whole bag full of them out there to our spot whenever we go to the beach.

Craig was an absolute dream – I parked him on a towel under the umbrella with a few toys, and he sat there playing happily without moving an inch.  I’d have forty more babies if I knew they would all be like him.  (OK that’s an obvious lie, I’m all done with the baby years, but he truly is the easiest kid.)  The adults took turns chilling on the chairs with the baby and Liam, or down at the surf monitoring the big’uns.  I kept a close eye on Liam himself, who was going back and forth between “surfing” with his little boogie board, and playing in sand – the rest of them were predictable and easy to monitor.  The swimmers were very quickly swept by the tide down the beach, and every once in a while one of us would wade in, knee deep, and roust them all out and back up near our spot.

The children predictably began to fall apart at about 2.  No lunch, no nap – it was the sweet spot of fratchiness, especially for Liam and Savannah (the five-ish year olds).  And turns out all of them had a sunburn, as did most of us – I had bought new Hawaiian tropic sunblock and had liberally applied it, reapplying on occasion, but I think it was defective.  Jack and Sav burned so bad they peeled, and I got some burn in some areas.  Liam and the baby got a different kind of sunblock – a baby skin sensitive kind – and they were totally fine.  I’m tossing that Hawaiian tropic in the trash after this trip.

We schlepped everything back into the car, rinsed the kids in the shower, repacked everything up, and then drove to a late lunch at the Crab Trap.  It’s a fun little seafood place just over the border in Florida, and it has a huge playground/sandbox that the kids can run around in while we adults enjoy our meal at picnic tables outside.  We had a few drinks and some shrimp and fish, and then once more shoveled ourselves back into the car for the long ride home.

The kids parked in front of a movie with a giant tray of carrots, apples, grapes, and celery, which they completely demolished and then asked for more.  We adults had some red wine and some of our own carrot sticks (everyone was feeling the need for roughage), and then eventually got all the kids showered and mostly sand-free, then tucked them all in.  We made a dinner of tortelloni and meatballs, plus a big salad, and ate our dinner and drank our red wine by candlelight.

Saturday morning saw us being spoiled with a cooked breakfast by our guest – giant fluffy pancakes and a whole package of bacon, washed down with oceans of coffee.  We had a leisurely morning of letting the kids watch cartoons and play with cardboard boxes, while the adults got over our mild hangovers from a long night of talking and wine.  Breakfast was late enough that we weren’t feeling hungry for lunch, but we headed down to a lovely nearby town for ice cream and some running around at the playground.  I love this little town – we’re often tempted to move there, but it is too far from my job and the commute would be murder.  In any case, we had ice creams on the porch, and then threw the children into a fenced in, giant, gorgeous playground area, and let them run while we took turns keeping the baby from killing himself.  There was an area with fountains that eventually, inevitably, the children made their way to.  Savannah and Jack had a ball getting their clothes soaked – Liam, the only one in jeans, quickly tired of dragging soaked denim around and came over to me whining for new clothes.  I put him in some 12-month pants of Craig’s that were in the diaper bag – that kid is so skinny, they fit like shorts!  I gave him my own undershirt, which I was wearing under a sweater, and he felt much better.  Looked ridiculous, but felt great.

Eventually, all of the children tired of the game, and we headed back to the car.  We stripped the kids of their wet clothes, Liam in his silly get-up, Savannah wore her daddy’s shirt, Jack sat in just his wet underwear on a diaper in his booster seat.  The novelty of this set-up made them all wild with glee on the way home.  There were a lot of “jokes” about butts – kissing butts, smelling butts, that sort of thing. Once we arrived at the house, we shoveled each of them into something warm and dry before forcing them to take a nap.  The Professor and I ran a quick errand during naps, and then the adults quickly scattered some filled plastic eggs around our yard for the kids to find.  It took them maybe five minutes to collect them all – even Craigsy found one or two – and then the big kids sat in the front room and counted their loot.  A few minutes later, we all sat down to a lovely chicken pot pie which I had prepared the week before and just had to heat up quickly, along with green beans and a white wine.  After our early dinner, we dyed Easter eggs.  I had only bought 18 – 6 per big kid – and the kids dyed them in about thirty seconds.  They would put the whole egg in a cup of dye, pluck it out a few seconds later, then put the next one in.  I tried to show them how to do stripes, to draw on the egg with a white crayon before dyeing – anything to stretch it out a bit.  In the end, we got some solid colored eggs, most of them broken due to fumbly handling by the children, and we called it good.

 

 

After bed time, the Easter bunny came – we stayed very tame this year, another giant tax bill once again pinches our style, so they just got a few bits of candy and a little 99 cent car apiece, and Craigsy got a book and a sippy cup since he can’t eat candy.  The Alabama Easter bunny bought Savannah an Alabama t-shirt to remember us by, and the North Carolina Easter bunny brought the boys some fake iPhones and bubbles.  The fake iPhones were a hit the rest of the trip – the kids were texting each other and calling each other and us constantly.  I’d hear “Mom, MOOOM!” and I’d say “what?” and Liam would say “No, I’m CALLING you,” and then I’d have to run and grab my real phone and hold it to my ear and have a fake conversation.  The things they chose to “text” each other and call each other about were hilarious.  Also hilarious – when Jack had to show Michelle how to close all of her apps on her actual, real iPhone.  He somehow knows how to do this, and she does not, and that made as all laugh pretty hard.

To be continued . . .