Hot and sticky and a TON of peace, love and salt water.

So we made our way from South Carolina to Florida.  We gave up the fight on Gullivers Travels.  We will come back to it but it just wasn't doing it for us.  Since we are now going to be in Hanibal for Tom Sawyer days with our good friends Edie, David, Aimee, Cedric and Pete (OK we have never met Pete but we know we will love him!) for the Fourth of July, we decided to do Huckleberry Finn (we had Huckleberry Finn on our reading list not Tom Sawyer).  We are all loving it!  I think it adds to it that we are going to the event.  The setting along the road got much nicer and more scenic into Georgia and Florida.  It also got hotter.  With a raging temperature around 100 most of the time and again that humidity, we were not looking forward to our unpacking so the trip taking 5 hours was just fine!

Song of the trip:  It was a tie between Fat Bottom Girls and Another Brick in the Wall. Mom got to pick the music but I am lucky that Kirk has instilled in them a love of the classics.  It always cracks me up when Ella loads up a Sting or Police song and knows every lyric.  Sights from the road....we stopped at a roadside stand for water and bathroom and ended up with a treat of the softest fluffiest Peach Fritter and Cherry Butter.  Yummmmmm

We made it to our campsite at Little Talbot Island.  It truly was / is fantastic.  It literally is a jungle.  Moss is dripping from the trees.  There are lizards and snakes and exotic birds and turtles.  The kids all have these pictures on their phones and will hopefully have a chance to post them soon.  The reception is horrible unless you are on a data connection, as I am now.  We just set up nice and slow and were soaking wet when we were done but I fell in love with the charm of it all.

I love the water and try to spend as much time as I can in it whenever we are near.  So on set up night, we walked the mile from our campsite to the beach and went for a dip as the sun went down.  As most people reading this blog will know, my mom has been dead three years now this month.  Her 64th birthday would have been 7/28.  My love of body surfing, adventure, the outdoors, good coffee early in the morning, butterflies, managing crisis and more comes from her.  My mom spent a great deal of her life not wanting to be alive in it and the rest living it to the absolute fullest.  When I was young she had a passion for the book Hope For The Flowers and spent some time having me read it and trying to explain to me why it meant so much to her.  The remembrance of that book and the meaning behind her death and life has left me seeing her always in butterflies.  That first night as we walked to the beach to swim, and Ella to gather her seashells (a passion she got from my mom that is sure to stink up my car), the butterflies were out in beautiful force.  I can feel her a lot on this trip but that moment was extremely special and that combined with the unique and serene area has left me feeling tender about this spot in general.

Now, the kids don't have the same sentimentality for it all and the Bugs (yes with capital B), the heat / humidity, sand, long walk to the beach and the fact that the campsites are so squished together you can hear your neighbors sneeze like they are in your tent, has not left them feeling so warm and fuzzy.  We did enjoy a beautiful bike ride, albeit short because of the heat and more body surfing along with some snorkeling and shelling tonight.  Everyone is getting bronzed and blonder in these hot days.

Tomorrow we are off to St Augustine for a day trip after we get up at 7am per Ella's request to shell.  For all who know Ella's sleeping pattern, this will seem like a lie, it is not!  She is intent on finding a sand dollar and what she considers rare shells.  Katrin has been promised some car time for air conditioning and to avoid some bugs!  Hopefully I will just keep all this love and peace and joy and tomorrow will be as great as the ones that came before it.