One More Day

Well, I can't believe it, but we've finally made it to the last day before Spring Break!! It seems like just yesterday we had 5 weeks to go. Time has gone by fast! All week Halle has been saying she hoped this week would go by super fast and then next week would go by super slow. I was hoping for the same.

Halle and I are pretty much packed and ready to go (can you tell we're excited?). We just have a few random things that need to get into our suitcases before we head off tomorrow morning.The kids at school today are all geeked up. I remember being a kid in school and loving the day before break. We hardly did any work and we were always excited, especially if we were going somewhere cool.

I was trying to remember some of my Spring Break memories from when I was a kid. My parents always seem to scrounge up enough money for us to go somewhere every year.

*We went to Florida quite a bit. We never flew because buying 5 plane tickets would have sucked up all the money my parents had set aside for the vacation, so we always drove (all 20+ hours). We always had a van, and we would take out the two captain seats/bench and lay blankets down. Obviously, my parents didn't think we would ever get pulled over by a cop and questioned why we weren't in seats. We never did though!! It gave us so much extra space to lay down, play games, etc. My dad would drive all the way through. Sometimes he would stop at a rest area and try to sleep for a couple hours, but we all just wanted to get there, so he would just keep driving.

*One year, we did try stopping at a motel right off the expressway and boy was that an adventure. It was after midnight and my dad was quite tired, so he decided to pull off and find a place to sleep. He should have known by the looks of it that it wasn't a good place to be. It was called "Scottish Inns" somewhere in the South (I'm not saying all Scottish Inns are this way, but this one was). When we got to the room, we noticed that cops were circling the motel. We went inside and realized that this was a place where men and women meet up for a couple hours and then go their separate ways (I think you get my drift). My mom was so freaked out she wouldn't let us lay on the beds, nor the carpet. There was a huge hole in the wall and bees were flying all around. My brother is allergic to bees, so everyone was freaking out. We pretty much all went to the bathroom, packed up and left. It lasted about 15 minutes!
* One year we took my Great Grandma Franklin with us. I remember my dad had pulled over and was trying to sleep for a little while, and he had turned the car off. It was 2-3 in the morning, and it was HOT! My grandma and I were awake because we were sweating so much. We didn't want to wake my dad up because he was so tired, but we were dying. We were laughing, trying to be quiet and trying to cool down. Finally, we woke my dad up because we couldn't handle it any longer.

*The first time we went to Disney World was SO cool. I remember shopping for clothes before we went, and Allyson and I got a couple of matching outfits, just in different colors. My parents bought a 6-7 day pass to all the parks, so we went everywhere. We even went to Typhoon Lagoon, which is one of the waterparks, and Allyson got lost while we were there!! Somehow we found her in one of the gift shops talking to the sales clerk. We stayed in Orlando, shopped at Disney Village, and conned my parents into staying an extra day or two!! (That's one nice thing about driving-you choose when you leave)

*One night at Disney, a severe storm came in. It was lightning and tornado sirens were going off. The lines to get out of the park were miles long, so we went and sat in a locker room with a few other families until the lines died down. As a kid, it was a little freaky, even though I'm sure it wasn't as bad as I remember.

*We started going to Clearwater Beach on a fluke. We were supposed to go to my aunt's time- share in another city, but we landed on Clearwater Beach first, and thought it looked like a fun place to stay. We found a hotel and ended up loving it there! For quite a few years after that, we always went to the same hotel.

* After Brad and I got married, the DeLanges started going with my family to Clearwater Beach. The first year or two, Brad and I didn't go with them, but one year we all went. It was a lot of fun. The boys scoped out girls on the beach, the girls shopped, and Halle was just 2 years old, so she loved every second of it. We took her to Magic Kingdom for a day, but she doesn't remember much of it.

We're really sad that Parker and Brad aren't going with us this year, but we're looking forward to all the memories we will make on this trip. Hopefully, sometime soon, we can go somewhere as a family...We have a few ideas brewing...