Beach Bums



Chris always shows lots of excitement when he's
driving for long periods of time in the car.



Last month Chris and I decided that we'd take the boys on their first "offical" family vacation and drive to Pensacola to visit my cousins, aunts and uncles for a week. Most people don't really see the fun in driving 12 hours in the car with three boys under six, but I was so darn excited. I think I was more excited then they were and by the time we were in the car to take off I think we may have let out some squeals. I can't begin to tell you how much my husband enjoyed that. *insert sarcasm* There's just something about roadtrips that make my heart happy and allow me to not think about looming decisions, laundry, baseboards and cleaning my kitchen. Roadtrips are fun especially when you're final destination is the beach. This trip was really important to me for other reasons as well. It was sort of like a mission to come full circle, start a new leaf, give lots of hugs and begin to learn about people that I've only heard about in stories. It was time to put faces to names, and what better place to do that than Florida. To explain my family and it's structure I hontestly think most people need a flow chart so please be advised that it's confusing. I always enjoy watching people's faces when I try to explain it...the who's who and what not.  I think when I was around 20, the flowchart idea popped into my head...still haven't done it. I think I should laminate one and stick it in my wallet in case of emergencies LOL! Anyway, back to the beach, I mean heaven, I mean the beach...



The sky was beautiful...every night!



I'd say that Pensacola is where a lot of things culminate for me as a person. My birthmother met my birthfather there, so in a way my story kind of begins in Florida. We decided to drive there after meeting my cousin and aunt at my little brother's wedding and I immediately fell in love with their humor, personalities, love for food and fabulous sense of style ;). Luckily my birthmother decided to come down too so we were preparing for really exciting time together and I couldn't wait to soak up the time with them. I felt like I had thirty years of catching up to do but strangely enough it felt like we had grown up together. I kept thinking I had some "remember when's" or "that was so funny when's" to talk about but we were just starting to create those. I was excited to finally have cousins, to have aunts and uncles who laughed like me, a connection to my family that hadn't been able to occur until now, for my boys and husband to meet new family members and most importantly the ability to see God's Grace in action. There's no one else who could have pulled this craziness off. Is it confusing, yes, of course, but you know what, I don't care. Really....I don't.



My cousins and aunt



One of the biggest things that as been affirmed in our adoption process is that Chris and I are going to have to make decisions that are best for our family. There are many people who probably have panic attacks thinking about having four children. There are people out there who couldn't imagine adopting a child and there are adopted children who have no interest in learning about their birth family. I am not one of those people. Chris was giggling as we were talking about this post last night and I think he joked about how lucky we'll be that our daughter won't have my stubborness. Funny, funny...I hope she does. Sometimes it's a good character trait to have. I'm not going to promise that we won't cry behind closed doors about her having a relationship with her birth family if that's what she wants and we definitely won't promise that we'll have all the right words to explain everything to her. We will say that there are lots of people that love her and if she wants, we can all just be beach bums...