A Taste of Being Complete

Things have been great. Life felt complete. I had my family in one place. Now we are back to reality. CB and I returned from Mississippi last night, and back to school for her today. Now all we have to do is get through another month before we get to see E again.

The munchkin and I took a red eye from PDX to the South. I have to give that kid some credit. She fought sleep until we had been on the flight for 20 minutes. Then she crashed, HARD. A six year old trying to sleep on an airplane is not easy....she as all over the seat, and mine. I didn't sleep at all (could have been the excitement!) Unfortunately, E had to work the morning we got there. But the hotel was across the street from the airport, so we walked over there and took a nap. The pool, a shower and some jump roping outside and then I saw him. E pulled into the parking lot. Munchkin didn't see him, until he got out of the truck. She broke out into a run, straight to his arms. I can't compete with that! Then it was my turn. It was perfection, a feeling of being complete came over me.

New Orleans has an aquarium, and we hit that up during the weekend. They had a stingray pool, which for the munchkin was the highlight. We sprang $2 to let her feed the stingrays. The best money spent! (Or at least so far!) She loved it. We walked through the French Quarter and enjoy6ed some beignets at Cafe Du Monde.

The pool was our stand by while E was working, and the little one spent hours in the pool playing with some other girls. I was able to read a book. And absorb some Vitamin D. My pale translucent skin had been using the tanning bed prior to going down there to prepare. It was a good thing because even with the SPF 85 I was getting color! CB was turning brown. I wish I had her skin genes! Totally a Coppertone baby when  she was done. (Yes...she had the waterproof SPF 85 on also).

The weather was on our side. Since E's job is reliant on the weather, we lucked out that operations were canceled a few times :) We did get a beautiful thunderstorm. I haven't seen one in about 10 years, CB has never seen one. Rain fell and the sky lit up. The next night it woke CB up in the middle of the night and she crawled into bed with us.

Dolphins have been a big thing in our house, and the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies was close. So of course we went on the tour, and got to watch the dolphin shows. It was a lot of fun. So much fun that a few days later we went back so that the munchkin and E could feed and train the dolphins. The joy on her face was priceless. Buster even splashed the two of them with his flukes. Which I think made her day.

The beach there is completely different than here, for one you can actually walk out into it. It was pretty warm and you could go out for quite a way before you were in over your knees. The downfall was that the beach was pretty dirty, and not from the oil spill but people's trash. It was kind of disturbing. One afternoon E and CB flew a kite. Another day we collected hermit crabs and made a little pool for them. It was pretty entertaining to chase them down. I even saw a blue crab crawling away at one point.

We had a wonderful family reunion, and it was 11 days of happiness. Now we wait until May, and then we get to see him again. And after that we are in the home stretch. I really can't wait to have our family back together. I know that there are two other redheads waiting for that moment too.