Vacation--Day 1

Okay. So today was the first day of our family vacation. I had this wonderful idea that we could leave by 5:00 a.m. and the kids would sleep for a good 2 hours on the road. 2 hours of blissful quiet. Caroline is a late sleeper by nature, and Jack has been sleeping in when he goes to bed late. So we purposefully kept him up late so he would sleep in. I went to bed late due to the fact that I was still getting things ready and set my alarm for 3:45. Jason and I finally rolled out of bed at 4:15 a.m. and got dressed and pack up some things that we had to wait to pack this morning.

When it was time to go, Jason went and got the kids up while I zipped up our luggage on the top of the car. Caroline went to the bathroom when Jason got her up, and as she walked out of the bathroom she went straight back to bed. I cajoled her towards the car and she complained about it not being a school day. I reminded her that we were leaving for Corpus and she was like, "Oh yeah, cool." She climbed into the car and went right back to sleep.

Jack was another story. As I closed Caroline's door, he comes bee-bopping out of the house. He climbs in, covers up and immediately starts playing with his phone. DARN! As we are driving down the road, he's asking tons of questions about how long it is going to take, how we are going to go, etc. When I tell him to go to sleep he says, "I can't, the lights are keeping me up." Apparently, the street lights were an issue. No worries I said, we'll be out of town soon. But by goodness, no sooner had we left the street lined avenues of town that the stupid light in the sky was keeping him up. Caroline stayed asleep until Waco, so we got her up and ate breakfast. She went right back to sleep as soon as we got into the car.

I thought the trip went quickly enough. We ended up stopping about every 2 hours to let everyone stretch their legs and go to the bathroom. About 90 minutes out of Corpus, the kids got a little gripy so I invoked my "Neutrality" power and climbed into the back seat of the car and stayed in between them. The remained quiet until I had to climb back into the front and had to give Jason some directions. They only got quiet when we climbed the bridge and saw the USS Lexington.

I'm not really crazy about our hotel. It's okay for what we're doing and it's about all we could afford right now. The kids absolutely LOVE the place though, so that's good. It's on the beach and has a really great pool. The best part, it's a stone's throw from the USS Lexington. I got a great picture of Jason with the kids standing on the beach in front of our hotel with the Lexington in the background. Caroline and I built a sand castle, and Jack had fun learning all about salt water. We stayed down at the beach for about an hour and a half and then they went to the pool.

We're going to go have dinner at a seafood place right next to our hotel, and then take a walk on the beach. Tomorrow, who knows what we'll do. That's the beauty of vacation. If only Jason's work would leave him alone.