Family Time

A couple of boogie boards, a few plastic buckets and shovels, a cooler full of Gatorade, and lots and lots of sunscreen. It doesn't take much to create a special family memory.

A wise woman once told me not to worry about expensive family vacations while the kids are little. She said, "You can rent a hotel room down by the airport, swim in the indoor pool, order pizza in the room, watch movies and play board games -- and your kids will feel like they've been on vacation."

So we tried it. Mike's neurologist has moved to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, and this week Mike had a routine appointment with an MRI - at 6:30 a.m. Since Mike would need to drive up the day before, we decided to make it a family affair.

We arrived in Jacksonville Thursday afternoon and spent about 3 hours playing in the hotel pool. Not a fancy resort pool, mind you. Just a plane old run of the mill "Hampton Inn" style pool. We ordered Italian food to be delivered to the room while we all watched Wipeout. I let the kids stay up really late and at 11 p.m., I removed the sofa cushions to pull out the sofa bed and saw this sign. "SOFA BED IS BROKEN. DO NOT USE! GET A ROLL AWAY FROM THE OFFICE IF NEEDED." Hmmm. We already had one roll away for Big Brother.

I called the office. She said that it was against the fire code to put three roll aways in one room. And all the other suites were booked. Soooo. . . she gave us two connecting rooms. At 11:30 p.m. we moved to two rooms -- with four queen beds total. No pull out sofas or roll aways for us.

Mike went for his appointments the next morning while we slept late.  And ate breakfast.  And let all the kids "work out" in the exercise room.  And watched Animal Planet.  After he was done, we checked out and hit the beach.

Lots of fun for very little cash. Sometimes just being together is the best part!