Beach bums

If I had one more ounce of energy, I’d download Friday’s pictures and show you what an awesome time we had at the beach with our near and dear friends, the Garcias….previous owner’s of Nathaniel’s GIRL PANTS.

But I don’t right now, so I won’t.

Thursday, we obviously had an outrageously fun time at the beach. We ate breakfast at the pier in Daytona Beach Shores (where Nathaniel had an epiphany of sorts….he was sniffing all the bottles on the table at the pier restaurant…a place ON the water….NO glass in the windows…all ocean breeze and sunshine…and he says to me “This ketchup smells like saltwater!” Ummm..duh? We are sitting on top of the beach, son, your fork smells like saltwater) and then we drove up and down the beach with the back open in the van and the kids sitting back there with their feet hanging out. They thought that was the best thing since sliced bread and it was funny to watch my kids behave like tourists. We went back to the house for supplies and bathing suits and headed back to the beach for some serious in-the-sand-and-water goodness. We had a ball! The water was perfection, the temperature was nice and the skies were gorgeous, could not have hit the beach on a better day. For living in Florida and an hour away from the Tampa beaches, we never go. We prefer to drive 2 hours to Daytona and hang on the beach over there….gives it a feeling of vacation. It wasn’t until we’d spent all our energy in the water and got back to the house that we found out we’d been romping in the stretch of beach where there were the most shark bites this year AND the riptides have been the worse. We made it out alive. All is well.

Friday we went back to the beach with the Garcias…Dawn and two of her three girls, Sonyah and Sabrina. It was so much more fun with friends, the kids were insanely happy to pretend to surf and to dig in the sand. My mom and I had rigged together this beach net…we took two curtain rods, 2 yards of mesh and sewed it into a net that the kids could hold in the water and catch stuff….and our McGyver masterpiece actually WORKED! The kids were so impressed by the ability to catch all the little tiny fish and crabby-type creatures…we collected hundreds, we killed several…but they felt like little scientists doing it.

Friday night I got the chance to go out to dinner with some friends that I have not seen in way too long. We talk often, but have not had a chance to see each other since Peyton got sick. It was so good to catch up, I felt like I was reconnecting with some of my pre-cancer friends, which was so needed. This new venturing out of our comfort bubble and leaving home is hard, but now that we’ve done it successfully with no fevers or sudden needs for the hospital, I’m hoping it’ll get easier each time. We used to go often, we’d pick up and leave for a weekend or a week over the summer without a second thought…the past two years have been sort of isolated to the things we can do within a certain radius of our doctors. It’s a strange sense of freedom to feel like we can go and do the little normal weekend trips again.

Sex and the City….what can I say and not spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet….not much. The clothes were both fabulous and hysterical, I was perfectly thrilled with the movie and it was all I wanted it to be and more. Better yet, the time spent laughing and talking and just hanging out with my fellow cancer moms was tremendous. It is such a blessing, this bond we share. At that table were moms of kids in treatment, kids done with treatment, kids who didn’t win the cancer battle, and it didn’t matter, it was just friendship and support and love all around the table.

I have to share the phenomenon we witnessed at the restaurant pre-movie. There were 10 of us, we were all going to see the movie and darn excited about it.

However, we did not do any of the following:

1. Wear matching theme clothes for the movie
2. Order Cosmopolitans
3. Bring our own decorations for our dinner table made of bright pink tulle bows
4. Come equipped with our own martini glasses
5. Act only slightly more obsessed than those people who wore their Jabba the Hut costumes to stand in line for the Star Wars premieres

We felt so ashamed that we hadn’t planned ahead better. I take all the blame, I am a failure as an event planner. My next plan is that we go see the new Batman movie and everyone has to wear a cape and mask! Good times! Frankly, I felt we’d done enough embarrassing ourselves in costumes at the Scavenger Hunt, but that’s just me.

f.r.o.G.
–Anissa