Beignets for Benjamin's 11th Birthday

In an effort to stay relevant as time is whizzing by (and we're accumulating more and more memories than we can possibly contain), I will take you back to the very first day of our trip: June 3. 

We planned to leave by 7:00 in the morning and pulled out of the driveway around 7:30, so we really didn't do too bad. 

Benjamin wasn't too pleased to get such an early start to his birthday, but he was excited to get to ride in Grandpa's car (where he just about got unlimited Zelda time on the Switch). We did quite a bit of his birthday celebrations the day before we left—we put up his birthday balloons and opened his presents and things like that. 

Here he is posing in front of his birthday balloons with Phoebe:

Utah or bust!

After being home from the beach for a week, we left on a cross-country road trip to Utah. In retrospect, a week was perhaps not quite enough time for a family of eight to turn around from a beach vacation to a long-haul roadtrip, but somehow we managed to get things done...most things, anyway. 

We left on Benjamin's birthday, stopping by New Orleans for some birthday beignets, and then driving on to San Antonio, Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon before settling in at the cabin in Grover, Utah, to enjoy Capitol Reef for a couple of days. Rachel and I then gave Grandpa and Daddy a break from driving—she and I drove from Grover to Goblin Valley (which is about 1.5 hours away, the longest period of time either Rachel or I have ever driven; Andrew even took a car nap and then woke up in a panic because he never gets to take car naps and wondered why the car was moving). We finally made it to Spanish Fork on Friday and have been busy ever since.

Zoë was baptized on Saturday, for example.

Pictures will be coming soon, I'm sure. In the meantime we're still adventuring and visiting and having a grand ol' time!

Beach Pictures II (May 24–25)

It feels so strange to be writing about this still—like an experience from another lifetime! Since taking these pictures we drove a couple thousand miles, across swamp and desert and mountain. We'll get to those pictures soon. 

In the meantime, yes, I'm still trying to get my thesis finished...so you get beach pictures. And we'll get caught up on our road trip soon. The kids all had travel journals and were supposed to be taking notes about what they observed and felt while we were touring up and down the countryside, so hopefully they'll have some fun things to share as well. I think that really helped me get these beach posts up...and yet, here I am...making more beach posts.

*****

Phoebe really loved this pink chair. Unfortunately for her, we retired this generation of chair after this trip because we purchased them about 10 years ago for $5 each at Kroger. They had served us well, but we really were afraid we were going to rip right through them every time we sat down.

Beach pictures I (May 21—23)

Let me see if I can guilt my children into finishing their writing assignments by leaving some passive aggressive hints in (and wide open spaces for them to add information to) this blog post...

Phoebe loved the ocean. She squealed with joy practically the whole time we were at the beach. She'd take a wave to the face, looked stunned for a second, and then get right back to splashing around and having a grand ol' time.

Goodbye to the Beach Pictures

We have a tradition of taking a family picture at the end of every beach trip. It began 10 years ago when we first took our kids to Wrightsville Beach in NC (though I'm sure that (a) there is a family picture of us at the beach from before then and (b) that we've missed snagging a few family pictures since then). It would take me too long to hunt all of them up right now (and my list of things to do today is already a mile long), but here's a link to that fateful trip in 2013 (the one that started it all):

Junior Rangers sashes

Last year Miriam and I made a sash for Benjamin to keep his Junior Ranger badges on (as a present for his 10th birthday). He's still wildly obsessed with the idea of becoming a National Park Ranger and his enthusiasm is rubbing off on Zoë and Alexander, who requested sashes of their own. Knowing that we'll be hitting a number of national parks this summer (beyond the ones we visited at the beach), Miriam (and I) decided that we should finally make sashes for Zoë and Alexander.

So I ironed the fabric, traced the pattern (which was just Benjamin's sash), and cut out the fabric.

Miriam embroidered a gorilla for Zoë and an owl for Alexander and sewed everything together. 

She did a much better job heading up the sewing part of the project than I did last year (when I did the bulk of the sewing and all she did was the embroidery). The sashes turned out super cute and Miriam had a couple of very satisfied customers.

Here she is getting ready to embroider Alexander's owl this morning:

The Timucuan Preserve (a guest post by Benjamin)

May 26:

On the way back to  Georgia we stopped at a place called The Timucuan Preserve. 

It is on an island in the middle of the Saint John River. [Mom edit: The drive was surprisingly beautiful. We were on a winding dirt road for a good 10–15 minutes. The canopy of trees above us, draped with Spanish moss was divine.]

Fort Matanzas (a guest post by Benjamin)

 May 24:

14 miles away from the Castillo de San Marcos there is a tiny fort  called Fort Matanzas. Its perimeter is only 200 feet and its sides are only 50 feet long; it is shaped like a very short L.

It was made two years after the British laid siege to Saint Augustine because the Spanish had been resupplied via the Matanzas River so they needed to protect the inlet. The solution...

Fort matanzas!  

Castillo de San Marcos (a guest post by Benjamin)

May 24:

A couple days ago we were in Florida visiting a fort called the Castillo de San Marcos. The oldest masonry fort in the US is so cool! They built it in a star shape so that they could catch their enemies in a crossfire, which basically means that you are getting shot at from three sides.

That is terrifying! 

Caldecott's Grave and Our Lady of La Leche (a guest post by Miriam)

May 21, 2023:

On Sunday morning all of us were supposed to go to the older part of Saint Augustine, but that didn’t work out very well. Because of the stomach bug that we got right before we left for Florida, we all took turns being sick, and today was Rachel’s turn. We were planning on making our way to the ferry at Fort Matanzas today, but we decided that maybe that wouldn’t be the greatest idea, considering Rachel was feeling nauseous the entire day, and going on a boat, with nausea, not a good combination. So instead we spent the morning and afternoon in downtown Saint Augustine (and the surrounding area).