Well I've missed a ton of things on here. Like practically Kelsay's first entire year of life. So I need to make a note for her right here: Kelsay, you were the best baby anybody could have wished for. We loved just about every minute with you except the ones when you were screaming your head off which were few and far between. You were the sweetest baby with a happy attitude and love of life that was a joy to watch every day. So I didn't write much about you, not because you were bad or didn't do cute things or because I didn't love you as much as Maddy. I didn't write about you because you were such a wonderful baby and I just didn't need an outlet to vent about therapy stress, or medical procedures, or worry, or update people on the latest diagnosis. I just got to enjoy you and not worry and it was special! Love you so much.
Okay. Hopefully when she reads that 10 or 15 years from now it will help both of us not feel so bad that I didn't document her first year. Ha! I will go ahead and note that we did her 9 month appointment a couple of weeks ago. She had kind of plateaued on her weight. She was 18 lb 4 oz and 27 inches long. The doctor thought she might be longer but she was super mad while they were measuring her so we did not get a good stretch to measure her height. I think she has plateaued on her weight because she is so busy pulling up, cruising and keeping up with Maddy. She checked out as a healthy baby, right on target with everything.
Sooooo, onto the real reason for this blog. South Carolina!
I feel like this trip was totally a gift from God through crazy circumstances just so we could get to see and appreciate a new part of his creation. The time we spent on the beach was really the closest I felt to getting true "time alone with God" as people put it in a very long time! I'm getting ahead of my story a bit here but I do want to throw in a side note that people who put moms of young kids on a guilt trip for not getting their sleep deprived butts out of bed 30 minutes early to spend "quite time with God" every morning should be shot. Quite time with God is not something that just happens from plopping down with your artfully arranged Bible study materials and following procedure anyway. At least I haven't found that true connection in my life. It comes from a state of mind that is hard for humans to achieve under the pressures and circumstances of a busy world and I've never found that the memorable times I've had of being in awe of God's character, creation, presence whatever, comes bent over a table at 5 a.m. before I've had my coffee. But I digress. Big time. Back to S.C.
So last year, just as I was getting hugely pregnant with Kelsay, we found out that one of Lynn and Tricia's classmates at PT school was coming to do a clinical in Dallas and needed a place to stay. We tried to help him find a place close to the hospital where he was working but that didn't work out. So we invited him to stay at our house for the 8 week time. He was a great guy who Maddy came to love and we hardly even ever knew he was here. At the end of his stay we went out for BBQ together at Aaron's favorite restaurant and wished him luck through the rest of his PT journey. And that was the end of that, or so we thought. Well it turned out that his parents were just super thankful for us letting him stay with us. We've had lots of people stay in our house for extended periods of time, so to us it was no big deal. In fact, I felt like we didn't do enough because even though we invited him to eat with us for dinner each night he mostly just ate out or microwave meals. Anyhow, his parents just viewed this as this incredible act of generosity that normal people would not do. I don't agree with this, but this is how they viewed it. So to thank us, they offered us a stay at their time share in Hilton Head, South Carolina! Wow! We were like, ok how can we refuse. So we booked the trip for October.
The day finally came for us to leave for our trip and Maddy woke up vomiting. I was disappointed but I knew that there was no way we were leaving on a plane this day. Aaron had the Herb Robbins Symposium and had left that morning before any of this started so I had to get a hold of him and try to figure out what to do. After talking to Aaron and Chris's mom ( the guy who stayed with us) about the situation we decided to try to get standby tickets to leave early Sunday morning. Aaron stopped on his way home from DBU and talked to the airport counter and got us on standby for an 8:30 flight. The flight had tons of seats available so we knew we'd be able to get it IF we could get everyone feeling well enough to travel. Maddy was finally able to keep some food down that evening and we hit the hay early. We got up a little before 6 the next morning, grabbed our bags, threw on our clothes (except Kelsay who was in her pj's still) and headed to the airport. We checked car seats and bags. Lady behind the counter seemed a bit confused about how to tag everything, what to charge for, but we finally got it worked out and headed through security to our gate. We ate breakfast while we waited to board the plane. Got on just fine and had a pretty uneventful flight to Savannah, GA.
When we got to the Savannah airport, we headed to bag claim. Out came the car seats, out came all the bags....except for ours. As all the other passengers walked away and the carousel stopped moving, my heart sank. I knew immediately that our bag had not made it. Aaron was working on getting our rent car at the time so I had to wait for him to come back to let him know our bag hadn't arrived. So he had to go back up to the ticket counter and try to find out what happened. They found a bag that had our sticker on it but it was not our bag. At first we thought it was a bag switch so we left the airport assuming that our bag would come in on the next flight, that surely they'd be able to track it down and the could send it out to us later that evening. We hopped in our Chevy Spark which Kelsay despised the whole trip. She would scream herself to sleep every time she had to ride in it so that was fun. We thought we'd go downtown in Savannah for lunch but by the time we got down there there was no place to park and the kids were passed out so we decided to take advantage and just drive over to Hilton Head. It was about a 45 minute drive. Lots of trees and occasional views of salt marshes. It was really hard to find some place to eat on the way over because everything was designed so well to blend in with the surroundings. By the time we saw some place, we were already past it. We finally managed to stop and go through a drive thru BBQ place. Win-win. We just got the food and decided we'd eat at the resort because we were about 15 to 20 minutes away. So we arrived at the resort and Aaron went in to check us in as I waited in the parking lot with the kids. Well, my phone suddenly started ringing and it was Aaron. So I knew there was yet another kink in our trip. Sure enough, they had no record that we were registered to use the condo that week. Fortunately they were able to get that worked out after another 15-20 minutes and we thankfully arrived at the condo where we were staying. BBQ was cold by then but we were so hungry we didn't care. We ate and then decided to run down to the beach as it was about a quarter to half mile from where we were.
Once we hit the beach, all the rigamarole we'd been through that day didn't matter anymore. I had told Maddy that she could only go in the water up to her ankles because we didn't have any other clothes. That lasted about 5 minutes. She just kept going deeper and deeper into the waves so Aaron had to follow her in with his only clothes and they both got wet, but had a great time. Maddy completely lost her balance and dunked herself at one point. She LOVED the ocean. The whole time we were there that is all she wanted to do. Kelsay had a good time playing on the beach in the sand but then she started trying to eat sand. We let her get just on the edge of the wave and stand and she liked that too.
After about an hour we decided to go back to the condo and check on our bag. Plus, since it was October and getting evening, Maddy was getting pretty cold in her wet clothes. When we got back I had to give Maddy and Kelsay a bath. Remember that Kelsay has been in her pjs this whole entire time! Then they had to run around with nothing but towels on til I could get their clothes washed and dried. Fortunately there was a washer and dryer in the condo. After Aaron called the airport, it became very apparent that the airport was NOT going to find our bag anytime soon and if we were going to get any enjoyment out of the trip we just needed to forget about it and move on. That was hard because my camera was in the bag and I was pretty sick about them losing that. Anyhow, we decided to find a Wal-Mart and get some essentials. We got a swim suit for Aaron and Maddy. Another shirt and shorts for Maddy, a set of clothes for Kelsay and some shorts and flip flops for me because I had travelled in jeans and tennis shoes and you just can't enjoy the beach in jeans and tennis shoes! With the washer and dryer, we managed with that just fine. We looked like the worst kind of tourists because it was the end of the season so all the cheap clearance stuff was stuff that said "Hilton Head" all over it, but oh well! Even the flip flops I got say Hilton Head.
The next day was much better. We ate breakfast at the condo, got everyone ready. Aaron scheduled a dolphin tour for us that evening and then we headed over to Harbour Town. There is a little lighthouse there. You have to pay to walk to the top. But it was fun. It is like a museum as you go up the stairs and they had several legends that were ghost stories so Maddy enjoyed those. At the top you could go out and look over the island and they had a little gift shop. We told Maddy that she could chose on thing so she chose a bag of rocks which she filled with only the pink and purple colored rocks. After that we went to The Krazy Krab, which was a seafood restaurant. The lady in there spotted right off that we were total landlubbers and made some suggestions about what seafood we might like. I got fish and chips and Aaron got a blackened grouper sandwich. Both were really good but the blackened grouper was both our favorites. Oh, I also had shrimp and that was absolutely amazing. I don't know that I can ever ear rubbery, frozen shrimp again. Maddy had mac 'n' cheese of course.
After lunch, we left Harbour Town to go back to the condo and go to the beach. This was what Maddy had been waiting for all day. She played, and played, and played and played in the water. Kelsay fell asleep on the way over and amazingly stayed asleep the whole time we were at the beach so I had time to just sit and watch the ocean. I saw a pod of dolphins swim past and lot of pelicans looking for meals. They did the most amazing corkscrew dives into the water when they saw something. Just getting to sit by the ocean made me realize how small humans are in the universe. Even the people that were the farthest out in in it swimming were just barely on the edge of the vast body of water stretching on and on. When you hike a mountain you can mark a spot and say, I've been here. I've conquered this. But who has really ever conquered the ocean. There are people who sail back and forth across the ocean, it's true, but they don't know every place, every part of the ocean. Even they only know a very small space they've travelled over in a boat. I also got to spend some time looking for seashells with Maddy and we found a crab that was washed ashore during the tide going out.
It was getting close to our time to go on the dolphin tour so we headed back to get dry clothes and get ready for that. The tour was fun too. The boat went out into Calibouge Sound (pronounced Calibogie). We saw a dolphin mother and calf. He had a catch net that we could throw out and Aaron and I both tried that. We didn't catch much but got a few little fish to look at and a puffer fish which was pretty cool. We could see him bobbing on top of the water as we drove away. The guy who ran the tour said he had seen dolphins playing with puffer fish like balls. The tour lasted about an hour. Maddy's favorite was dangling a piece of rope off the back of the boat to catch fish. Ha ha.
When we got back we had some supper at the condo and then went to The Ice Cream Cone to get ice cream. It is the oldest ice cream shop on the island. We didn't know that when we went there so it was kind of fun to find out about it. Aaron had a huge banana split and Maddy got a swirl frozen yogurt. They both enjoyed.
After that it was time for bed. We had to fly out the next afternoon to get back for school for Maddy on Wednesday and also for Tam's art talk on Thursday. We were sad to have such a short time at the beach, but we decided to try to see something in Savannah that morning before we left. I found the Oat Island Wildlife Center. It is run by the Savannah school district and is a really neat place. I highly recommend as something to do if you are ever in Savannah.
They had pumas, wolves, foxes, birds of prey, alligators, and some other animals I can't remember right now. It was kind of like a zoo but more like you were seeing them in their natural environments. Maddy's favorite were the wolves. They had a pack of four. There was a video in the observation cabin that showed the pack howling. Maddy would go over and watch the video and howl with the wolves. It was hilarious. It took us about 2 hours to walk through the whole preserve. There was also a part that was like the old farm/plantation buildings that the preserve was on that we did not get to see.
After that we headed to downtown again to try to get lunch. One of the people at the airport had recommended a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes. Well that place was nuts .We would have had to wait at least an hour just to get in so we decided to investigate other options. We found River Street. That was a really neat place. They had a lot of old buildings and cobblestone streets. We saw a barge being loaded with freight cars. They also had a clipper ship docked across from the place we ate. The waitress said it was a cult. The guys on the ship thought they were finishing a mission that was not completed by the apostles by sailing around on this ship and telling their people their version of Christianity. There was also a guy playing a sax on the street. Aaron took Maddy over to put money in his hat and request a couple of songs.
After that it was time to head back to the airport. Still no news of our bag so we basically got home with the clothes on our back and great family memories. Our bag has not been found to this day.
Okay. Hopefully when she reads that 10 or 15 years from now it will help both of us not feel so bad that I didn't document her first year. Ha! I will go ahead and note that we did her 9 month appointment a couple of weeks ago. She had kind of plateaued on her weight. She was 18 lb 4 oz and 27 inches long. The doctor thought she might be longer but she was super mad while they were measuring her so we did not get a good stretch to measure her height. I think she has plateaued on her weight because she is so busy pulling up, cruising and keeping up with Maddy. She checked out as a healthy baby, right on target with everything.
Sooooo, onto the real reason for this blog. South Carolina!
So last year, just as I was getting hugely pregnant with Kelsay, we found out that one of Lynn and Tricia's classmates at PT school was coming to do a clinical in Dallas and needed a place to stay. We tried to help him find a place close to the hospital where he was working but that didn't work out. So we invited him to stay at our house for the 8 week time. He was a great guy who Maddy came to love and we hardly even ever knew he was here. At the end of his stay we went out for BBQ together at Aaron's favorite restaurant and wished him luck through the rest of his PT journey. And that was the end of that, or so we thought. Well it turned out that his parents were just super thankful for us letting him stay with us. We've had lots of people stay in our house for extended periods of time, so to us it was no big deal. In fact, I felt like we didn't do enough because even though we invited him to eat with us for dinner each night he mostly just ate out or microwave meals. Anyhow, his parents just viewed this as this incredible act of generosity that normal people would not do. I don't agree with this, but this is how they viewed it. So to thank us, they offered us a stay at their time share in Hilton Head, South Carolina! Wow! We were like, ok how can we refuse. So we booked the trip for October.
The day finally came for us to leave for our trip and Maddy woke up vomiting. I was disappointed but I knew that there was no way we were leaving on a plane this day. Aaron had the Herb Robbins Symposium and had left that morning before any of this started so I had to get a hold of him and try to figure out what to do. After talking to Aaron and Chris's mom ( the guy who stayed with us) about the situation we decided to try to get standby tickets to leave early Sunday morning. Aaron stopped on his way home from DBU and talked to the airport counter and got us on standby for an 8:30 flight. The flight had tons of seats available so we knew we'd be able to get it IF we could get everyone feeling well enough to travel. Maddy was finally able to keep some food down that evening and we hit the hay early. We got up a little before 6 the next morning, grabbed our bags, threw on our clothes (except Kelsay who was in her pj's still) and headed to the airport. We checked car seats and bags. Lady behind the counter seemed a bit confused about how to tag everything, what to charge for, but we finally got it worked out and headed through security to our gate. We ate breakfast while we waited to board the plane. Got on just fine and had a pretty uneventful flight to Savannah, GA.
Once we hit the beach, all the rigamarole we'd been through that day didn't matter anymore. I had told Maddy that she could only go in the water up to her ankles because we didn't have any other clothes. That lasted about 5 minutes. She just kept going deeper and deeper into the waves so Aaron had to follow her in with his only clothes and they both got wet, but had a great time. Maddy completely lost her balance and dunked herself at one point. She LOVED the ocean. The whole time we were there that is all she wanted to do. Kelsay had a good time playing on the beach in the sand but then she started trying to eat sand. We let her get just on the edge of the wave and stand and she liked that too.
After about an hour we decided to go back to the condo and check on our bag. Plus, since it was October and getting evening, Maddy was getting pretty cold in her wet clothes. When we got back I had to give Maddy and Kelsay a bath. Remember that Kelsay has been in her pjs this whole entire time! Then they had to run around with nothing but towels on til I could get their clothes washed and dried. Fortunately there was a washer and dryer in the condo. After Aaron called the airport, it became very apparent that the airport was NOT going to find our bag anytime soon and if we were going to get any enjoyment out of the trip we just needed to forget about it and move on. That was hard because my camera was in the bag and I was pretty sick about them losing that. Anyhow, we decided to find a Wal-Mart and get some essentials. We got a swim suit for Aaron and Maddy. Another shirt and shorts for Maddy, a set of clothes for Kelsay and some shorts and flip flops for me because I had travelled in jeans and tennis shoes and you just can't enjoy the beach in jeans and tennis shoes! With the washer and dryer, we managed with that just fine. We looked like the worst kind of tourists because it was the end of the season so all the cheap clearance stuff was stuff that said "Hilton Head" all over it, but oh well! Even the flip flops I got say Hilton Head.
The next day was much better. We ate breakfast at the condo, got everyone ready. Aaron scheduled a dolphin tour for us that evening and then we headed over to Harbour Town. There is a little lighthouse there. You have to pay to walk to the top. But it was fun. It is like a museum as you go up the stairs and they had several legends that were ghost stories so Maddy enjoyed those. At the top you could go out and look over the island and they had a little gift shop. We told Maddy that she could chose on thing so she chose a bag of rocks which she filled with only the pink and purple colored rocks. After that we went to The Krazy Krab, which was a seafood restaurant. The lady in there spotted right off that we were total landlubbers and made some suggestions about what seafood we might like. I got fish and chips and Aaron got a blackened grouper sandwich. Both were really good but the blackened grouper was both our favorites. Oh, I also had shrimp and that was absolutely amazing. I don't know that I can ever ear rubbery, frozen shrimp again. Maddy had mac 'n' cheese of course.
When we got back we had some supper at the condo and then went to The Ice Cream Cone to get ice cream. It is the oldest ice cream shop on the island. We didn't know that when we went there so it was kind of fun to find out about it. Aaron had a huge banana split and Maddy got a swirl frozen yogurt. They both enjoyed.
After that it was time for bed. We had to fly out the next afternoon to get back for school for Maddy on Wednesday and also for Tam's art talk on Thursday. We were sad to have such a short time at the beach, but we decided to try to see something in Savannah that morning before we left. I found the Oat Island Wildlife Center. It is run by the Savannah school district and is a really neat place. I highly recommend as something to do if you are ever in Savannah.
After that we headed to downtown again to try to get lunch. One of the people at the airport had recommended a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes. Well that place was nuts .We would have had to wait at least an hour just to get in so we decided to investigate other options. We found River Street. That was a really neat place. They had a lot of old buildings and cobblestone streets. We saw a barge being loaded with freight cars. They also had a clipper ship docked across from the place we ate. The waitress said it was a cult. The guys on the ship thought they were finishing a mission that was not completed by the apostles by sailing around on this ship and telling their people their version of Christianity. There was also a guy playing a sax on the street. Aaron took Maddy over to put money in his hat and request a couple of songs.
After that it was time to head back to the airport. Still no news of our bag so we basically got home with the clothes on our back and great family memories. Our bag has not been found to this day.
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brittany