Daniel & Annabel's Adventures: Beach Vacation...Finally!!!

Life works in mysterious ways.

We finally got our beach vacation with my parents. And in a nutshell, it was so amazing and wonderful and perfect and I came home SUPER clear minded and calm and "bucket-filled," having not thought about a THING but being with my family in twelve days. It was the best feeling in the world. And all I could think was...maybe this trip needed to happen now after all, maybe I needed to go through all that to gain all this perspective and clarity and centering in myself.

Anyway, I spent the last couple months of the school year, April and May, doing exactly what I did two years ago- rounding up clothes, new swimsuits, new books for the road trip down, and so on. But, I actually found myself sort of tip-toeing into this whole trip, nervous that it would actually happen. It was an odd feeling and quite a dawning realization, as it was affecting my mood and all- but this is exactly what I pegged it to, this nervousness and, basically, doubt. It was all a bit too deja vu for me. (And then, two weeks before our trip, Grandpa Gary needed an emergency surgery to remove HIS gallbladder! Sound familiar- talk about deja vu! It's almost like I could sense this would happen- so weird. In any case, all was good and we were good to go still!)

And then, when school was out we officially started to truly get excited and pack and all. Annabel had spent weeks researching Anna Maria Island and our rental units. She was on the rental website looking at the pictures, floor plans (we even found out you could turn the units into "dollhouses" for another perspective of the place- too funny!), and getting the lay of the land. The kids basically claimed bedrooms before we even got there! It was so funny. The school backpacks got filled with things to do, we filled a bin of snacks and other things to go by the kids' feet, we filled a box of our "back-up" books (a very real need!), we signed up for the library's summer reading club in anticipation of getting a ton of reading done, the dining table filled up with things to go and so on. We were busy! And only getting more excited!!

Finally, June 4th came! We were ready to hit the road!!
Our trip took place in a few different parts. I'll break up my posts accordingly.

First up:
I still really wanted to go to Mammoth Cave, so that was our first stop on our drive down. The kids did great in the car, entertaining themselves and getting along for the most part. We all loved Mammoth Cave. We did the Drips & Domes tour, which was about two hours altogether, with the bus ride out to the entrance and back and all. I LOVE caves and Annabel discovered she does, too. Daniel was very keen to take pictures with his GoPro so that kept him real interested, as well. The first part of the tour was stairs winding down down down and twisting and turning and you had to duck or bend here and there and it was SO cool! Then we went through a series of domes, with the guide even demonstrating how truly pitch black it is in the cave by turning out the lights when we were seated on benches. Then the tour continued to the "Frozen Niagara" area, which had very cool drips, and stalactites and stalagmites and all. So pretty and amazing. I could stare all day. We all decided we'd love to do more cave tours. And really, as Ben said, it wasn't that long a drive there at all- totally doable! Such a great way to start our vacation! The kids already loved having Grandma Cheryl and Grandpa Gary there to share it all, too. Perfect!!!

Getting prepared!

This was the dollhouse view of our unit. Too funny!