Mayne, Party of 3: Florida

First things first, I realized that I have some notes from the weekend that we moved that I didn't get a chance to include in that week's entry. So three things to catch up from that:

We waited until the last minute, basically, to pack up our TV in the living room in the old house in Mt. Juliet. Evie went to bed on Friday night and the TV on which she watches things like Cinderella, Winnie the Pooh, and Berenstain Bears was still in its cubby above the fireplace. Saturday morning after breakfast before Granna and Grannadaddy arrived to take her to Memphis, Evie asked me for "Rella". I said, "No, baby, no Rella." She said, "Rella!" indignantly, as though I was denying her access to her favorite movie just for fun. I said, "Baby, where do you think Rella is?" She looked at the hole where the TV had been and then raised an eyebrow. Then said in a meek and melancholy voice, "Rella?.... Backson?...... Bears?!......" You could see her slowly realizing that all of her TV friends were no longer available. Fortunately she had plenty to entertain her at Granna and Grannadaddy's house, but I couldn't help but laugh at her discovery and despair.
Granna reports that on their way down to Memphis that Saturday, Evie sang along with a CD that has some kids songs on it, including "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Praise Ye the Lord". Evie sings along with "If You're Happy" and I caught that on video below. But on the day Granna took her she also sang along with "Praise Ye the Lord", only Evie's version was more along the lines of "Praise Eeyore".
Granna also reports that Evie was looking through the pictures on Granna's phone and came across a picture of her birthday cake from three weekends prior. Evie said, "TATE!" (cake) and headed over to the counter where the cake had been sitting that weekend. Her memory is astounding!

So, now, on to this week, and once again I lament that I don't have pictures to share. We are still in the middle of unpacking and I am using my Mac laptop which I find difficult to navigate in terms of viewing pictures easily. I'm sure next week or the week after there will be a post of almost nothing but pictures.

Anyway, this week we went to Florida for a much needed vacation. In some ways the timing was a little bad because we had only been in our house for 3 days and we left it quite a wreck and with tons left to do when we got home. On the other hand, we really needed to get away and just have a fun time together after all the stress of selling and buying and moving. We left Friday afternoon and drove to Canton, GA to stay the night with Kristy and her family. We pulled out of Memphis around 2pm and Evie fell asleep not long after that. We had to stop in Jackson to get gas, so that woke her up and she didn't really fall back asleep for the rest of the trip. We stopped again on 840 for some refreshements and to stretch our legs, then we stopped in Chattanooga and had dinner overlooking a valley. That was nice. We had wanted to see Rock City but it closed before we could get there. After dinner we drove straight on into Canton and we met up with the Drakes at their house. Evie and Lydia played together for a while and we finally got everyone to bed around midnight Eastern Time. I was impressed with Evie's stamina!

We woke up around 8:30 the next morning and spent some more time playing with the cousins. Evie was particularly enamored with Princess, their cat, and enjoyed watching Aiden tease Princess with a string. We left Canton at 10:30 or so and started our drive down to Florida. We stopped around Valdosta for lunch and then headed on south. A little over the Florida border we switched drivers so that Seth was driving and I could catch a nap. Of course it then started raining. It seems that every time we switch for Seth to drive and me to rest it always rains - Seth hates driving in the rain. So not too much later we switched back for me to drive. We made it to the The Villages to Abba and Grandma Pat's house and Pat was standing in the driveway. I said to Evie, "There's Grandma Pat!" and I think Evie recognized her from the photo book we have with everyone's picture in it. She also recognized Abba when we got in the house, though I think she was a little intimidated by him.

We had a very nice meal with Abba and Grandma Pat. Pat showed Evie lots of toys that she had set aside for her including a wooden cat that is suspended on two ropes. You pull the ropes, alternating hands, like milking a cow, and the cat will climb up the ropes to the top and then when you release the tension it will come sliding right back down. Evie loved that one! She also enjoyed the 50+ year old ring stacker that was Grandma Pat's son's and the wooden puzzle of Noah's ark that has elephant, giraffe, and camel cut-outs in the wood. Pat was kind enough to let us bring that one home.

Evie definitely took to Grandma Pat straight away, yelling her name out and requesting her to help with whatever toy she was working on. By the second day, Evie wanted to know where Abba had gone if he wasn't in the room. I was so glad she warmed up to them so quickly.

On Sunday, we took Evie to the pool in Abba and Pat's community center. That was Evie's first time in the pool and she had a blast! She loved when we bounced up and down with her and spun her around in the water. We tried to show her how to kick and float, but she wasn't so interested in either of those things. She didn't want to leave, but she was so tired that she couldn't even stay awake for the hibachi lunch we had afterwards - she slept right through all the chef's tricks and woke up when he was cleaning up the grill. When we got back to the house Evie and I took a nap together until almost 6pm and then had another wonderful meal cooked by Grandma Pat.

Monday we wanted to go to the Atlantic Ocean since even had seen the Pacific about a year ago. The Villages is equally placed between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, so we decided we'd let her see both oceans before the Gulf. We left Abba and Pat's house and drove the 2 hours to New Smyrna Beach. Evie slept most of the way but woke up as we were going down the highway along the beach trying to decide where to eat lunch and possibly find a place to change into our suits. We had lunch at a restaurant on an inlet but there didn't seem to be a good way to get changed so we just drove on to the beach and found porta-potties there. As I was changing Seth was holding onto Evie and he said she was absolutely raring to go. She had already claimed the beach for herself "It's Evie's beach!" and had decided to share it with me as well, "It's Mama's beach."

As Seth got changed I found us a spot to put down our towels, not too far from the life guard. There was probably about 60 feet of wet sand between where we parked our stuff and the ocean, covered of course with shells and seagulls. Evie and Seth spent some time in that wet sand making a sand castle and digging with the shovel we'd brought. She loved seeing the water pool back into the holes she made. Then she saw the seagulls and starting running after them as fast as her little legs could go, calling "TWEET TWEETS!!! TWEET TWEETS!!!" as she ran.

Then we were adventurous enough to get into the water. First we went in just enough to let Evie stand in the water up to her knees, but the sand would shift under us so much that we then started holding her instead. Soon we decided to sit in the water with her and we'd let the waves hit us and rock us around. It was one of those picturesque moments of parenthood that I love. The three of us sitting together on this beautiful white sand beach with green ocean water rocking us around and the look of delight and wonder on my daughter's face... Can it get any better than that?

Once again, Evie just didn't want to leave but after a couple of hours we were getting a little over heated and over exposed to the sun so we felt it best to drive on. We drove up to Daytona Beach just to see what it's like and to compare it to New Smyrna (we think we made the better choice) and then headed back to Abba and Pat's house. We had another great dinner and then off to bed.

Now, I mentioned that Evie had been getting out of her pack-n-play while we were at Granna and Grannadaddy's and fortunately we were sleeping in the same room at Abba and Pat's so she didn't seem to feel the need to escape and was actually very good about lying back down when I told her to, so I didn't put the modified sleep sack on her while we were there. But Tuesday morning, the day we were planning to leave, I woke up to this strange sound. I thought it was Evie pulling up the bottom of the pack n play like she had the previous morning - just moving the cushion around and folding it back out again. I looked down to the pack n play though and didn't see her, so I sat up and discovered that she had gotten out of her pack n play so quietly that neither Seth nor I heard it, and she had gone over to the side of the room where we had been charging the iPad and was trying to move the suitcase that was blocking her access to it. Her response when I caught was, "Not night-night, Mama." I let her get into bed with us but my alarm went off in 5 minutes anyway.

We had breakfast and said our goodbyes to Abba and Grandma Pat and headed back to Memphis with the ambitious goal of driving all the way back in one day. Amazingly enough we did meet that goal. We stopped about 60 miles up I-75 for gas and then again at the exit for Hwy 280 for lunch. Then we drove across Georgia on 280 until Columbus where we refueled and got snacks because Seth refuses to stop in Alabama (due to his year as a freshman in college there where he saw so much blatant racism that it put him off the whole state). When we crossed into Mississippi we stopped for dinner at a Sonic that had a playground so Evie got to stretch her legs and run around for a good half hour before the final leg home. We had left Abba and Pat's about 7:30 Eastern and arrived home at 9:15 Central so that was almost 15 hours total of being on the road, including stops. Evie is a total champ!

Since we got home the only other exciting thing was today when we toured a Montessori school. Evie has a placement in another daycare for this upcoming year but we wanted to see what our other options were. While I wasn't that impressed with the Montessori's toddler room (and neither was Evie), we both liked the preschool rooms. Evie wanted to get down and check out the maps and books and the story time tent and she was having such a good time she didn't want to leave (again). She'll likely be switching to that school when she turns 3.

I should mention regarding our Florida trip that Evie acquired state numbers 8, 9, and 10. So at the age of 2 years 1 month she has seen 1/5 of the US. Not bad. (If you don't know, my family is big on seeing all of the states and my parents managed to get to their 50th state together last year for their 40th anniversary.) Evie's state acquisition to date is as follows:

1. Tennessee - birth
2. Georgia - September 2012
3. Oregon - December 2012
4. Washington - December 2012
5. California - May 2013
6. Kentucky - February 2014
7. Ohio - February 2014
8. Florida - July 2014
9. Alabama - July 2014
10. Mississippi - July 2014

Edit to Add: Pictures!