PCB: Part One
The family is down in Panama City Beach for the week. We spent Saturday driving to Birmingham, where we spent a few hours playing at the McWane Science Center. That place is so huge. I'm so happy that our membership to SciQuest in Huntsville allows us free admission to McWane.
We left my grandmother's apartment in B'ham at 9am on Sunday. The big anxiety for the trip has been dealing with Calvin's increased awareness of his motion sickness. We gave him a kiddie dose of Dramamine...that left Calvin feeling both woozy and excessively talkative. I swear there was a grand total of 10 minutes that he didn't talk on the 4 hour trip.
We arrived in PCB and soon had the kids on the beach. Wanting some quiet, I stayed behind at the house, put away items, and did a bit of household maintenance and improvements.
The in-laws decided to rent a house so we wouldn't all be crammed in Doris's place. JD's parents stayed in the extra house Saturday night and told us that JD and I would be staying there for the rest of the week while they stayed at the family house with all the kids (the only stipulation being that we couldn't leave each night until we had put our kids to sleep).
After being in the rented house for a little while, it became obvious that this wasn't an entirely altruistic act. While the family house is essentially a "manufactured home," the rented place is best described as a converted camper. The ceilings and doorways are low (requiring me to walk around with my head hung down and body slouched), the bedrooms are barely larger than the beds, and I must squat to see anything higher than my nipples in the bedroom and bathroom mirrors. But it is a kid-free zone.
Monday started with a trip to Home Depot followed by several more household projects. The house water filter was replaced. Next was the replacement of the door for the utlity closet. I took the old door apart and helped Andy with templating all the holes and such on the new door. I then hung the new door and was grateful that the latch was perfectly aligned an didn't require any adjustments.
Chris (JD's middle brother) arrived in town Monday afternoon with his two older kids in their A/C-less rental. Shortly after their arrival, we were at the beach. This time I joined them. The surf was nice and smooth with few waves breaking, so I could see thru the water to the bottom even better than usual. I ended up wandering out quite a bit from shore, trailing big schools of tiny little fish.
Once the kids went to sleep, JD and I returned to the rental. Chris decided to stay at the family house for the first night to ensure his kids didn't have any feakouts from being in a strange place. JD gave me a mini-pedi and painted my toe nails purple while we watched Grease on AMC.
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