Destin Trip 2009

Percy, Chesley, and I went to Destin for a week with my family. We had a great time but I wasn't sure if we would ever make it there. The Wednesday before we were supposed to leave on Saturday there was a huge storm all night and all morning. We lost power and so I took Chesley over to my mom's so I could heat up her bottle and feed her that morning. I came back home to change clothes and noticed lots of water forming a stream against our neighbors house. When I got inside our house I thought I would go and check to see how the drains on the side of our house that gets the run off water from the higher houses on the street were doing. I looked out Chesley's window and saw we had our own little river running alongside the house. Then I took a step back and heard a squish. I felt the carpet and it was wet. At that point it was only wet about a foot into the room but within an hour it had made it all the way through Chesley's room and was soaking the wood floor outside her doorway. Every room in our house that shares that exterior wall was taken in water. I was seeping in where the floor and walls meet. Percy was working an hour away and I called him right after I felt the wet carpet., he left immediately to come home but instructed me to go check to make sure the drains were actually draining to makure sure they weren't clogged or anything. So I put on rain boots and walked to the back line of our property where I found that the drains were gushing with water-they were in fact working fine this was just your run of the mill flash flood that our drains couldn't keep up with. Bad news, right? So the good news is that my father in law runs a company that dries out water damage! Thank goodness for his crew. They were out in no time at all and immediately started taking bits of my house apart to dry it out and telling us what we needed to do and what would happen etc. They were great because we were clueless, (ever find yourself in need of his services let me know I'll give you their number!). Good news, right? So the bad news is that the machines used to dry everything out are still in my house. They had to drill some holes in the bottom of some cabinets in bathrooms, laundry room, and a closet, and take some baseboards off to get the air movers (aka hard core fans that put Jennie F's wind machine to shame!) pointed behind walls etc. They said hard wood floors are the hardest and take the longest to dry out so to prepare myself for these loud air movers and dehumidifiers to be around for a while. Chesley's room took the worst of it so the carpet was ripped up, baseboard removed, lots of machines in there and so on. So we stayed at my mom's Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before we left for the beach since we would have had to disassemble her crib to move it to another room in the house for her to be able to sleep. Percy's sister Casey and cousin Dottie house sat and Weeza sat for us while we were at the beach so someone could monitor the machines and deal with the painters I planned to come and paint my bedroom and bathroom while we were gone- sounded like a brilliant plan to me at the time, have the painters come in and make their mess while I was gone and come home to a freshly painted house!-then we flood, not so great)- in come Casey and Dottie who put up with the mess for us and take care of Weeza and deal with the flood fall out-love you both so much! So, we gallivant off to the beach where some of my dad's family is also vacationing on a crazy coincidence and we have a great time playing on the beach with Chesley, who was very laid back about the whole beach/sand/pool thing-she really liked turning her face into the wind and found a deep love of bubbles. We went out to eat with our cousins twice, ordered in alot, cooked a little and had a wonderful trip. We headed home and do in fact come back to a freshly painted bedroom and bathroom, and our housesitters have left the place immaculate (don't ask don't tell...) but we still have a few unwanted house guests-the air movers and dehumidifiers. So Chesley's room is still uninhabitable and she and I have been staying at my mom's since we got home. Percy would stay with us over there except for the fact that our dog and my dad's dog are insane together and howl all night if seperated and Weeza howls all night if she is away from us and knows we are there in the same house. I think it would put my mother over the edge if Weeza came to stay too so Percy is staying at our house. They came to check the machines Monday and told me if I want to speed things up it might help to turn up the heat. So as I am typing this I am sweating becasue our heat is on 90degreees. Percy is gone for three nights for work so I figured I would take advantage of that and crank up the heat to try and get these things out of my house!!! But I have been getting nasty comments about not posting any beach pictures yet so I came over tonight get these cute pictures of my sweet girl up for yall to see. Hopefully the house will be back in one peice soon and our family will be under one roof soon and this will be a distant memory! It could have been so so so much worse and we know that- we are so grateful to Percy's dad for all his help and to Casey and Dottie who dealt with it all for us for a week and to my mom for housing the homeless, (even if she won't house the Weeze). Sorry I know this has been a really long post and if you are still reading I'm impressed! Enjoy the pictures!!!

We had just gotten to the beach that afternoon but had to take Babycakes to see the ocean for her first time and put her little tootsies in the water! Ignore her parents-they had been in the car all day!

She liked digging her fat little toes in the sand!

This is sweet Ethan, my cousin Carrie's son. He loved playing with Chesley and she was a BIG fan of her cousin Ethan too. He sang to her at the restaurant when she got sleepy and helped keep her happy when she got fussy, sweet, sweet, boy.

Seven Months!

Chesley turned 7 months while we were at the beach but I actually did remember to take her picture! Quick recap of month 7-she is mobile. She crawls everywhere and with increasing speed and dexterity. She can sit up unaided until something catches her eye and then she is off. She can't get back up to sitting from the crawling posistion yet and this is not ok with her. She stands up on her hands and feet, tiny booty up in the air and fusses because she doesn't know how to get back to sitting where she can lay easily with whatever object sent her scurrying away after it in the first place! She makes a funny face all of the time where she squenches up her face and makes her cheeks real big by spreading her lips out sideways but not opening her jaw-she squeezes it shut like she is trying to press her upper and lower jaw against each other and sometimes she bites her tongue while doing this face as well. I call it the teething face and it cracks me up the first 100 times she does it in one day-then I get over it and just change her diaper. She is more and more fun every day and we feel very very blessed to have her in our lives!

She officially will not let me take the picture with the sign sitting there if she has spotted it so my mom helped out and hid behind the couch to hold it over her head-thanks Annie!

My dad always feels the need to put his hats on Chesley, (maybe because it makes her look like the boy he is sure he will never have-poor thing), and the thing is she lets him. I can only hope she will be like Causey and adore a hat or bonnet well past the point at which most kids despise them!

Ok, so the house we stayed in was great. It was right on the beach, gorgeous view, lots of room for us all to have our own space and nobody step on the highly mobile Chesley-but, in the words of my father, "This house is great but if I were the owners I would shoot the decorator." Over the top would be putting it mildly. The light fixtures, excuse me-chandeliers in every room, (looking in from the porch one night I counted 7 chandeliers of varying sizes visible from my vantage point), had feathers on them- or were strung with so many jewels and/or pearls you would think the Mardi Gras parade just came through. But the best bit of decor of all was the at least 7 foot tall urn in the living room. We spent the week trying to guess what it would be used for and Katie came up with our best bet- to hold a very fat man's ashes- (it reminded me of Stan on Will and Grace). This thing was huge and so so so ugly. As my mother said, "It wouldn't even be pretty if it was a normal size, not even in miniature." So I have taken a picture of it to share with all of you because you really have to see it to grasp just how bizarre the thing was. Chesley decided she would help put things into perspective for you about how enormous it actually is. Oh, and I think we might have rubbed it to see if a genie would pop out until someone screamed,"No, don't-can you imagine how big the genie could be??"

Chesley was pretty blase about the pool. She just kicked back in her raft and looked at us like,"Yeah it's a pool? So? Why are you people ooohing and aaahing and looking at me like mad people?

Thanks so much to Haaga for a great tip-she told me to buy a kiddie pool to corral Chesley in on the beach- I told my Dad and Percy this and they came home from Wal-Mart with a hard plastic one- i think a blow up one might have been what Haaga meant but the men doing the buying knew they would also be doing the blowing up and made an executive decision. It worked great and she didn't mind it a bit- we gave her toys and she just hung out. She tried to reach out for the sand a couple times which brought my mother running saying, NO her eyes her eyes!, no sand got in her eyes but mom was freaked out enough by the possibility that she kept me from just dumping her in the sand to see what she would do (i thought that was a great idea-just plop her down right before we planned to go up anyway and let her have at it and see if she liked the taste of sand or not-i'm pretty sure i lived on a steady diet of white Gulf coast sand in my early years and have survived-but mom said, "Her eyes, her eyes!" enough to scare me off the idea!)

Did I mention my mom taught Chesley how to grab glasses off of peoples faces? Yes, it's a charming little trick she now does ALL of the time-she lunges at strangers dying to get her hands on their eyeware- and Aunt Katie's neon orange sunglasses were a favorite-Katie really seems to mind doesn't she?

Alex and Ethan taking care of Chesley who was knocked out since we did go to lunch during her naptime...whoops.

Aunt Katie had to hold sweet sleeping Chesley too since this is the only time she is still these days!

My dad bought some bubbles which Chesley thought were great but, she really liked it when Annie popped them and made weird pac man sounds as she did so-she laughed and laughed-thought it was hilarious-i brought the bubbles home with me, they are sure to come in handy...just got to get that pac man sound down though.

Here are a couple pf pictures from our little family photo shoot- we had to wrangle the help of both my sisters for the job of photographer since we had to go out on the beach twice since we couldn't quite see in the bright sun the first time.

Me and Chesley with my two beautiful sisters.