Sunday, June 26, 2011

Vacation Highlights

I feel like I should share the highlights of our family vacation to Hilton Head, SC.  I’m reading these out loud to my family now and we’re laughing hysterically.  Some of these moments are those “you just had to be there moments,” but I hope you enjoy reading them and are reminded of your own wonderful and wacky family vacations.

-       I was driving through Virginia late at night, talking animatedly with my brother, when I went across a bridge and passed a sign that said “welcome to Maryland.”  I had somehow ended up on 495 N even though I was on 95 S and had already passed through Maryland.  I still have no idea how that happened.
-       Getting to our motel off of the highway and not being able to get the door open.  It felt like it was locked from the inside and my brother could swear he saw someone sleeping in the room.  There wasn’t a homeless person squatting in our room, we just were turning the handle the wrong way.
-       Eating breakfast the next morning with a young woman (read: my age) who went on to tell us (without any of us prompting her conversation) that she was traveling from her home in NC to Washington, D.C. with her boyfriend who is a marine who doesn’t like to drive at night (and doesn’t let her drive) and is afraid to stay in D.C. because of the high crime rate.  The two of them have been dating for 7 months, already bought their own dog together, and she’s already been married and divorced to another marine.  Oh and she was also an only child until she was 13 when her parents had her younger brother, at which point she became his babysitter, not his sister. 
-       My dad asking us to pick out a sandwich for him that had all of the “appropriate vegetables.”  We had great fun deciding which vegetables would be inappropriate vegetables.  “Those banana peppers have filthy mouths.”  Definitely one of those “you had to be there” moments.
-       Stopping at a Subway in North Carolina where the girl in line behind us was having trouble reading what her coworkers wanted on their sandwiches.  Tomatoes were spelled “to matters” (pronounced “toe-maters”). 
-       Shadow barking at the cars that would pull up to the Subway while we ate outside.
-       Running on the beach and seeing sea turtle tracks, dolphins, and people catching baby sharks and sting rays. 
-       Shadow on the beach stealing people’s bocce balls and water bottles, interrupting their naps, and getting water trapped in his ears leading to gross ear infections.  Oh and pooping in the ocean.
-       Shadow trying to save us every time we went in the ocean.  He would swim out after us and grab our hands and arms and try to get us to come back. 
-       Shadow batting at a baby shark that a fisherman threw back in the ocean, and then proceeding to try to pick it up in his mouth.  Fisherman: “he’s going to get bit.”  Dad: “oh he’s fine.” 
-       Shadow licking a jellyfish.
-       Shadow’s collection of sticks at the end of the path to the beach, thus deeming him “stick dog” by everyone in the condo complex.
-       Learning that I could restrain myself from drinking too much sweet tea, unlike three years ago when I drank about a pitcher’s worth and then vomited in the restaurant bathroom.  The lady in the bathroom asked if she should get my mom, I told her my mom didn’t care because I was 20. 
-       Learning that I could not restrain myself from eating handfuls of hush puppies and almost reliving the sweet tea incident of 2008.
-       Thinking I was going to get dive bombed by a pelican and almost tipping my kayak over.
-       My mom (after she laughed at me) trying to get out of her kayak and almost falling off the side of her boat. 
-       Throwing sand on my brother’s leg and him retaliating by closing my beach chair on me.
-       My mom looking at the pictures on my camera and exclaiming, “what is this mush?” when looking at the picture I took of the dinner I made my dad for Father’s Day.
-       My dad playing “click it” (a game where you count yellow cars) by himself during the drive home.  My mom played her own game: she counted dead armadillos on the side of the road (which turned into dead turtles as we traveled further north).  
-    Hitting a ton of traffic on I-95 and deciding to take a route through Virginia back country.  Sites included a coyote walking down the side of the street and a pygmy goat farm.  

It's after 2 AM, going to sleep in my own bed!!

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