Florida 2011 : Margaritas, Lizards and Vomit oh my.

The annual pilgrimage to the beaches of Florida has, once again, come and gone too quickly. This year the boys and I headed out to Florida a few days earlier than Chris. It was my effort to avoid having to drive all the live long day and some to Florida once we found out airfares were going to cost an arm and a leg. I volunteered (not all that reluctantly) to head down a bit earlier to get cheaper faress, taking the boys with me, while Chris stayed up North suffering through the winter that just will never end.

I was a little worried about flying with the boys without Chris, but they were champs. Each boy handled their own luggage (cutest little roller bags ever) and got many a smile as they walked through the baggage claim area. We survived the longest wait ever for the rental car and a big meltdown over seating assignments in the back seat. I thought we were golden and pictured my toes already in the sand, when Brennan uttered those famous last words, “Momma, my stomach doesn’t feel so good.”

Two minutes later, he leaned over Griffin and projectile vomited all over him once, twice, and three or four more times until poor G was just covered in a whole bunch of vomit. Griffin started screaming. Brennan started screaming. Aidan covered his eyes in horror and I pulled off to the side of the highway as fast as I could manage.

I tried to grab Brennan out of the back seat to keep him from throwing up again, but I forgot he was still buckled into the seat. Hilarious vomited covered seatbelt wrestling ensued.

Two kids covered in puke, a back seat with buckets of quickly drying, smelling puke, and a couple of screaming kids two or so hours into vacation is never a good sign.

But we rallied. I got the suitcases out of the trunk and found clean clothes. Everyone got cleaned up. I thanked goodness that I always travel with Clorox wipes which made the clean up of the backseat much easier (and much better smelling.) And we all discovered that a Nintendo DS that has been covered in vomit will, amazingly, still work if you clean it off right away.

I had my first margarita of vacation approximately one half hour later. I deserved it.

All was good at the beach. The sun was shining, the water was soothing, the sand was perfect. We had a perfect day or so until Aidan uttered those famous last words, “Mommy, my stomach hurts.”

(I swear, I hear those words and my tension level just rockets through the roof because I know what’s coming. And it is never, ever good.)

We celebrated night two of vacation with many trips to the bathroom as Aidan vomited for about 12 or so hours. It isn’t vacation until someone pukes at 2 am, right?!

It was at this point that I pondered my wisdom of taking vacation early with the kids. Driving may have been better after all.

But after incident two of vomiting was over, we all remained, blissfully, stomach ache free. It was ten days of fun, surf and sand. Chris joined us three days into vacation. We had a rare year of my entire family eventually joining up at the beach. The beach is always perfect, but add in my grandparents, mom, brothers, sisters in law, aunts, uncles and cousins and well, it is almost a utopia. A utopia where they serve margaritas.

We saw manatees swim right by in the surf while the boys were on the sand bar. Dolphins jumped just feet in front of us for a private show. The boys caught a lizard with their cousin Liam. The lizard was quickly named Tim and lived on my grandparent’s deck for a day or so until he jumped to his death off the ledge. (In that day and a half, my grandmother fed Tim and made him a little house. She also checked on him periodically. At hearing from Brennan that Tim the lizard jumped off the balcony, my grandmother shook her head and commented, “Well, there just wasn’t anything else we could have done to make Tim feel more welcome.”)

We spent entire days on the beach, getting there at 9 or 10 am and staying to watch the sun go down. The boys never wanted to leave. They found so much to do at the beach. There were sand dollars to discover, sand castles to build, clams to dig, shell seeking to do, waves to jump, boogie boards to ride, and much, much family to play Frisbee, football, catch, swim, build or walk. (Add in a family that believes in munchies and cocktail hours at about 4 pm and it makes it hard to ever want to leave the beach.) It was a dream vacation.

My cousin Nicole offered to take the boys one night so we could enjoy an adult night out. Our quiet, casual adult night out with family evolved to the night of a thousand giant margaritas, that saw us dancing at the Daquiri Deck (there was no dance floor) and laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

Our last night on vacation was also the night of our family dinner with the entire group of us. My grandparents hosted a cocktail hour on the golf course where we took a family picture, followed by a sit down dinner. It was a beautiful event, made all the more special because the room was full of all those people we love. It is impossible to not feel truly blessed after sharing a vacation with our family.

When we left, I asked the boys if they had a good time. Aidan told me they did, but he said it went too fast. Vacation always does, I told him.

“Ten days just isn’t enough Mom. I think next year we should go for twenty days.” He told me wistfully.

If I can negotiate a moratorium on vomiting, I think I could definitely swing twenty days next year.