Spring Break :: Old Friends and New Faces

Whew! It's a very rainy Tuesday after spring break and we are all cooped inside with early school dismissals due to this terribly scary range of storms sweeping our part of the country.  Prayers for those in harms way and for those areas already devastated by the past couple days of weather.

Seriously though it was a spring break like no other for us.  Not to sound like a broken record {to those of you close to me who already clearly know all of this} but this is the first spring break in my memory, both recent and distant, that I did not spend at the beach.  Orange Beach, AL to be specific.  As I briefly touched on but never indulged in last fall in this post, my parents sold our family home and we are now entering into our very first beach season without a space to "go to the beach" to.  Not earth shattering, yet, but my very soul was raised, nurtured, enriched, and purposed by salt air, sand, and seawater.  The helplessness of being an hour away but not having a place to go to might reach fever pitch this summer.  {I'm not being melodramatic or anything right?}

We have a little family trip planned in Rosemary this June, are planning on joining a local pool, and here's to hoping the beachside Holiday Inn Express knows our faces by the time this summer is over.  I still count my blessings that the beautiful white sands of the Alabama Gulf Coast remain in "day trip" vicinity, but for this spring break we traded in sugary white sands for the equally steamy monotonous black strips of interstate 65.

As in we drove to Birmingham to visit my college roommate and her sweet kiddos.

We spent the first half of the week after Easter just relaxing, staying in our jammies for way too long, playdates with friends, trips to the Exploreum, and hunting Easter Eggs {seriously we might hold on to egg hunts dangerously past the seasonal norm...gives me nearly 15 minutes of entertained kids = priceless}.

On Thursday afternoon the kids and I stocked up on movies and snacks and headed upstate for a much overdue visit with one of my favorite people and her two little boys.  The last time we visited was over a year ago, a couple weeks before the arrival of Katharine's second little boy.  It's quite depressing that this was my first time meeting him in real life, but I quickly decided he could come live with us if Katharine allowed {she did not}.

We had one of those visits that made me feel like we always hang out and our kids have grown up together - which is both heart warming and heart breaking.  It's a special friendship that surpasses distance and time - I feel blessed we have that.

On Friday we thought we would take a crowd-free trip to the Birmingham zoo, which turned out to be elementary school field trip day for what appeared to be the entire state of Alabama, but we pushed through the crowds and the kids had a blast.  The weather was amazing and the animals were active, which never seems to happen at a zoo {those lazy animals...}.

We were back in Mobile by Saturday afternoon and after a SECOND four hour road trip with ZERO napping Jacobs I had about lost all patience with anything less than complete silence.  I'm sure I was a JOY of a presence to my husband when I rolled out of the car Saturday. {insert teeth gritting emoji}

Thankfully my son is cute and my husband is both cute and quick to forgive.

Now we have a few short weeks left until SUMMER and I'm just not able to wrap my mind around that yet.  Is it just me?  Where is 2014 going???

Am I just getting old and losing track of time??

{don't answer that}