Sweet Home

We just got back from our second of three "vacations" this year, the first being our trip to Disneyland in May and the next one being the 13th annual Good Lovin' camping trip in about 10 days.

We went to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Ralph, Alabama. Yeah, it's as exciting as it sounds. And boy was it HOT. But they took us on a road trip down to the Gulf in the city of Orange Beach. It was absolutely beautiful. The warm water, the white sand, the dolphins, the sun. Wonderful. Oh, and the sunburns. Not so wonderful. But we all had fun regardless.

We ate at some really neat restaurants there too. One was called the "Hangout", and it was just this huge beach themed restaurant. Wood picnic tables, open to the outside with sand piles and pits for the kids to play in. At night they have a stage and live music. While we were there having lunch they had a hippety-hop ball racing contest and Michaela made it to the final round! She's awesome at that thing! She lost to the other girl who was like 14 and a Cheater!! But she had fun and we bought her an extra special thing for being so awesome (she also ate ALL her fish and chips!). She picked out this pair of sunglasses with the "Camerican flag" on them. :)

The other neat restaurant was called Lamberts. It was very crowded and very loud and very awesome. You order your food from the menu and your drinks come in these half gallon mugs. As you wait for your food to come, they bring out balloons for all the kiddos and they have staff wandering around the restaurant dishing out the "passing dishes". One has fried okra, one has fried tomatoes and onions, one has black eyed peas, one has sorghum molasses and apple butter to put on your rolls!! Oh, yeah. The throwed rolls. So there are a couple of guys wandering around with trays of hot fresh sorghum rolls. They are huge and they are delicious. And they literally throwed them at you from across the room. Maeve got to catch her own and it took two tries, but she loved it. We made sure to take some home for breakfast the next day.

We also took a trip to the CHOM in Tuscaloosa to let the kiddos play around there. It was a really nice hands on museum, better than the ones we have around here. And my SIL took me to her mom's group meeting made up of some very nice southern conservative Catholic women. It was fun to sit and listen to them talk about Catholic school politics, many of the issues the same as we have here at our school, and other get-togethers they were planning for the next few weeks. They were a very nice group of ladies. She is lucky to have a group like that. It's something I've wanted for a while, but I have a hard time not being shy and quiet in new groups of people. The few times I have tried to join various mom's groups it just hasn't worked out. Of course, in the south they are NOT shy. I think I'd have fit in well with them. :)

The plane rides were semi-nightmarish and I'm positive that we made some unknown enemies out there, with their behind-my-back stink-eye because my kids wouldn't stop screaming or crying. Whatever. Shut up. My kids are actually relatively good on planes and it was a long trip for us all. We came home pretty close to 1:00 am our time this morning and took nice long naps this afternoon.

We're already back to normal. Alasdair is cranky, Maeve is screaming and Michaela is whining.

Ahhh, it's good to be home.