We all got to the beach house in Destin on Saturday, 6/24. My sister and family and her friend Shelly drove down and met us. We stayed in a new house this year that we really liked. It was the closest we have been to the beach, only about 5 houses up the street. There was a beach access right at the end of the street. The pool in the back was great as well. The only super annoying thing was the warning alarm on the back door. A totally great thing, an alarm that tells you when someone goes out the back door. A great safety precaution so you might know if a little kid walked out the door. Totally annoying though when you aren't used to it. You had to push the button on the door every time you opened it to turn the alarm off. We all forgot a million times during the week. Sometimes you would push the button to turn it off but then if you left the door open too long, it would go off. Lindy wasn't tall enough to push the button and that made her sad so her sweet papa went to get her some stools. I think it was a matter of her not being able to get up on her tippy toes because Will could push it. We got better at it throughout the week but the alarm was a pain in the butt!
We had a great week down there. The weather was great as well. We had rain one morning but it even cleared up by afternoon. We had to learn the tricks of the area because although there was a beach access right across the street, it was a pretty small area and you had to get there super early to stake your claim on your piece of beach. By super early I mean like by 6am. We took turns getting up and taking the tent down. If you didn't get there early you were behind a ton of people and that made me nervous the first day with Lindy. It was hard for her to find the right family and tent with all the people and no glasses on. Tropical Storm Cindy had blown through a day or two earlier so the water was a little rougher the first day or two but then turned into perfect, calm Gulf water. We went for a walk every morning and would usually do the beach until early afternoon and then go back for swimming in the pool in the late afternoon. The kids played well together this year. They always enjoy their week with the cousins at the beach. We did the normal picture night and out to dinner. We tried a new dinner spot this year that was good. We got out a couple quick times to look for t-shirts and souvenirs. We went to the outlet mall the morning it rained and found every other tourist there as well. We didn't even go into stores because there were lines out the stores. It was like Black Friday shopping in June. It was so crazy! We pretty much took it easy all week and just enjoyed the company and the white sands.
The last 24 hours of vacation did turn into somewhat of a nightmare! Thankfully the rest of the week had been good!
We left our cat, Jack, at home and our neighbor, Liza watched him for part of the week and then our church friend, Jess, watched him the second part of the week. Jess called Friday night and said that Jack was not doing well. She got over to our house and she said he didn't greet her like normal, was hiding behind the toilet, there was blood all over the bathroom, and his breathing was off. Jack was almost 15 years old. Drew and I didn't know what in the world to do. She couldn't figure out where he was bleeding from. There wasn't blood in his litter box and he was half white and couldn't find any on his fur. We went back and forth and she offered to take him to the vet. We found a 24 vet in Greensboro and she headed there at like 10pm. We felt so awful she was having to do this for us. She got him there, they did blood work and an xray and then the vet called. The vet said he had fluid all around his heart and in his belly. They finally found the blood was coming from his nose and he was basically sneezing it out. The vet said he most likely had a form of lymphoma and that any treatments would be costly and maybe give him two weeks. Jess said he had even gotten worse since she had first gotten to our house. We had to make the decision from FL, while on vacation, to put our cat to sleep. How awful - and how awful we had to have a friend do it. Jess is a huge animal lover and quite frankly we were glad she was with him. She gave him his last snuggles and that did help me out. We were leaving super early in the morning and didn't want to tell the kids that night or before we left FL, so we planned to tell them as soon as we got home Saturday evening.
Our 12 hour trip turned into a 14.5 trip because we got a flat tire in Greenville, SC at 6pm on a Saturday night. It was all crazy how it went down because we didn't even know. Drew could tell something was different with the car but we couldn't hear it or didn't feel anything. A car traveling beside us let us know. We pulled off the next exit and changed the tire in a Denny's parking lot. I've never seen Drew move so fast. There looked like a huge thunderstorm about to hit us. We had to unload half the back to get to the spare tire. While Drew changed it I loaded the car back up. But we were still 3.5 hours from home and we couldn't drive a spare that far. We looked up tire stores and by a miracle we found JR's used tires was going to be open till 6:30pm. We called, they had the right size tire, and we got there and got it changed before they closed. It was a miracle. We finally walked in the door at 9pm that night.
And still had to tell the kids the cat had died. We were all so tired and it was an awful time to have to do it. It was a rough night. Both kids were upset, but Lindy is really the animal lover in our house. She had gotten pretty close to Jack the last year or two because he let her pick him up and cart him all over the house. It was not a fun evening. Drew ended up sleeping with Lindy that night and I ended up on the top bunk with Will. It was a sad weekend for sure and it's still hard to believe he is gone. Lindy has taken it pretty hard. We had gotten Jack a year after we got married and we found him on the steps of our old church in 5 inches of snow. Drew brought him home and we tried everything to find his owner but we figure he was probably dumped there. And then he became ours. We had a love hate relationship with him and he had a hate hate relationship with the dog. No matter what it's just crazy he is gone.
So like I said, good thing the beach week was great but the end of the vacation was awful!
No comments:
Post a Comment