Vacation Rewind

I'm going to attempt to do here something I've never done before. This is going to be very edgy, people. I hear it may even be illegal in three states and some of the more wintry provinces of Canada. I'm going to tell you the story of our vacation. In rewind. From the end, to the beginning.

So where shall we end? Ah yes, let's end with the sun shining and the landlord girls mowing our lawn.

Wow, that was anti-climactic.

Then I found a bag of watermelon gummy sours. BAM! Cliffhanger!

Ha. Okay. So, when we left Tybee Island this morning, Loverpants asked our besties Eunis and Jeff (aka Euniseff) if we were all still friends. They laughed in a pained way, Oh, haha! Of course we're still friends...and then they made a quick beeline for their car and waved good-bye from behind the safety of their car windows, while Little Man threw a hissy on the rocky ground of the parking lot, possibly having a sugar crash from eating an ice cream sandwich for breakfast and Baby Girl nursed a wound from misjudging the distance between her head and my camera lens, begging us not to take her out to lunch by the riverside, because what could possibly be worse treatment than for a human than to be taken to a last hurrah lunch in posh Savannah?

Prior to that, we had THE BEST TIME at the beach. We suffered sunburn every single day but we still had THE BEST TIME at the beach.

Somewhere in the midst of all that beachcombing, we ate a lot of fruit and marshmallows and ice cream sandwiches. We had a lot of laughs about delinquent shuttles and Tiger Mom games.

Loverpants and I got to go to a wedding on Saturday night while Euniseff tended to our chipmunks. We paid them back by letting them go home after the vacation and giving them the choice to never answer our phonecalls again.

The wedding was remarkable, like floating around in one big love bubble. Congrazzles, Ash and Tuba!

When we arrived to Tybee Island, we found these quarters and decided that we would come back here every year. But only if we don't drive Euniseff away.

On our way to Tybee Island, I admonished Little Man to use the facilities. Baby Girl shared in the admonishment and told him, "Listen to your body, Little Man!" to which he replied, "It's not saying anything."

When we left home for vacation, we were so excited!!

The beginning.

P.S. Eunis and Jeff are the best people a FamiLee could ask to be vacation buddies with--we miss y'all already, Euniseff!

Tankerbell

Um, Mama?Mama's sleeping right now. Um, Dada? Yes? Which fairy from Fairytopia do you want to be? Um, how about... I'm going to be Illumina. Oh, Luna, huh? No, Daddy, ILLuMINa. Oh. I see. Yeah, so which fairy are you going to be? Oh, I'm going to be Tank. What, Daddy? Tink? No, we're not talking about Tinkerbell, we're talking about Barbie Fairytopia. Well, I'm still gonna be Tank. Tank? Yes, Tank. My fairy name is going to be Tank. Um, Daddy, why don't you just be the brownish-orangeish fairy. All right.

*** Purchased from total hipster Collective Clothing store in St. Elmo's. When every picture you draw is a hologrammic unicorn montage, a bag like this is made for you: a unicorn girl on the go.

Nude Beaches--wait, what?

If you are planning to take your family for some fun and frolic by the shores of the Ocoee River, you should probably prepare for the nude beach. I wasn't prepared, you see.

I thought I was prepared for a picnic, for river rock jumping, for birdwatching, for tossing frisbees and tattoo research around the Whitewater Rafting Center.

But then there was a public service announcement that the floodgates at the dam downriver had opened, and this woman who appeared to be the mayor of Ocoee told me I shouldn't let the children near the water. Because at any moment they would be wiped out like the people who didn't listen to Noah.

After considering my feelings about forced baptism, I decided I was actually looking forward to letting my children choose when they wanted to be baptized, so we moved our little party bus to the contained lake area down river aways.

The lake area was nice enough for Baby Girl to attach herself like Huckleberry Finn to a waterlogged log. Is that redundant? She probably toyed with it for a good 30 minutes, just submerging it and standing it up like a totem pole and --wait, when does girlfriend go half an hour at home without needing some kind of screentime? Twenty minutes pass and the girl starts pawing for technology like she's going to go into AFib if I don't hook her up with some Netflix, stat.

Okay, now. For realios. That was an exaggeration.

It's more like 10 minutes before they are both going AFib.

Just kidding, my kids are able to play without electronic stimulation at times, but this waterlogged log action was looking pretty Jungle Book from where I was standing.

While Baby Girl was playing Bear Necessities, her brother was getting a whole 'nother kind of bare. The boy discovered that a wet swimsuit + wet T-shirt + sand does not for a comfortable lounging outfit make.

So we stripped him of his attire and attempted to dry the ensemb in the bright and blazing sun.

In the meantime, we attempted to wrap him in a towel. Doing the loin cloth thing lasted for about 0.08 seconds, when, per his boy contract, he made sure everyone knew that this beach? Was nude optional.

HAHA. "Naaakeeee boyyy," he squealed with delight, wearing a grin seen below in Appendix A.

My dear friend Christa gifted our boy with her shirt for the ride home.

So, to review: If you go to Ocoee, plan for the nude beach or at least bring my friend Christa. Otherwise, you're just doing tattoo research or getting flooded by the dam. Or both.