A New Gameplan

Whew!  We had an awesome time at the beach!  The water was warm, the food was yummy, the pace was slow and the sun was sunny.  (Haha, that rhymes!)  It only rained one day while we were there and that in itself was pretty cool.  We got to watch the storm roll in and the lightening crack over the ocean.  The surf picked up quite a bit and we watched I don't know how many people's tents, floaties, umbrellas, and stuff blow away down the beach b/c it had all been left out.  On the last morning Celee, Lyla, and I went for one last walk on the beach and we got to see a sea turtle nest.  It didn't look like anything to me, but it had been roped off and a sign put up not to disturb it.  So I took a picture of it anyway just so I can say I did see a sea turtle nest.  The bad part is that I was using Jason's phone to take beach pictures and now he's back in Champaign with his phone.  The good news is I did find my phone when we got back from the beach!   Now with phone in hand I got the much-deplored text from the horse camp that Gwyn and Celee's camp had been cancelled because too many other children had backed out due to heat.  Mind you it's been hot here, but not the 100+ that Champaign has had.  I don't know why it irks me so much that they cancelled on the Sat. before the camp through a text message.  It just all seems rude to me.  The girls were super disappointed too.  The horse riding camp was the thing that the rest of our trip was planned around.  And I hadn't let them sign up for any Girl Scout camps or anything because they were doing this one.  Oh well.  We decided to stay in Jackson with my family anyway and so far we are having a great time. 
After picking up Tinkerbell from my mom, we headed to Jackson to take Jason to the train station.  The girls were finally getting to watch the final Harry Potter movie in the car.  We made them wait to see each movie until we had read the book and we've been reading the books in order since before Christmas.  Finally, Friday night we finished it!  We got to the train station way too early, so we ended up sitting in the parking lot of a Walgreen's watching the epic last battle scene from the last movie.  Then we really did have to take Jason to the train.  I hate that feeling of parting.  I know lots of people's husbands get deployed or travel for business a good bit, but that isn't how we've ever had to be.  So it's weird to be here without Jason for the rest of the month.  I just hope he doesn't get lonely (hint for our CU peepes!)  or eat too much junk food.  ;)

The girls are super enjoying there time with their cousin Jeffery.  And of course my sister Christine is such a good host we feel right at home!  We had planned to go to the Children's Museum here on Monday, but they are closed on Mondays so we ended up going to the Mississippi Museum of Science instead which was really fun.  They had a pretty neat-o exhibit on dinosaurs with lots of animatronic dinos.  The kids especially loved that all the big dinos had baby animatronic dinosaurs as well.

 They have a lot of different aquariums with native fish and wildlife and I saw the biggest snapping turtle I have ever seen in my life!  I sincerely hope I never see one that big in the wild.  I think it could easily take someone's hand or foot off.  Lyla really wanted to take pictures with my phone while we were there (I think because Celee had the forsight to bring her camera and was taking pictures herself).  And wouldn't you know that what was in front of her when she went to take pictures was 2 turtles "playing." 

There is also a really nice system of trails that is part of the outdoor portion of the museum with boardwalks and observation stations.  The girls especially liked seeing a real-life swamp complete with green algae and cypress trees.  We had fun imagining what might be under the water.  We also got to learn what a slough is, as several parts of the trail overlook sloughs off the Pearl River.  And there were frogs everywhere!  At first the kids wanted to catch them, but they were all yellow and orange colored so we were afraid they might be poisonous.  They were pretty cute though.

We did get to go swimming today but those sporadic Mississippi rain storms cut that short so in the afternoon we did go to the Children's Museum.  What fun!  It's a pretty good sized place with several things that I haven't seen at other children's museums.  Like the Digestive System playground.  You enter the mouth, crawl down the esophagus, enter the stomach, spiral down the small intestines, go through the large intestine, and then get "flushed" out at the end down a slide.  Their stickers and things at the museum say "I got flushed at the Mississippi Children's Museum."  Hilarious!  Especially because Lyla wanted to do this one over and over, so I kept joking with her that she enjoyed getting "pooped" out.  They had a really neat boat playground that all four of the kids enjoyed.  There was also a shell of a Nissan Altima that the kids could jack up, change the tire, wash the windows, fill with gas, and of couse pretend to drive.  They played in that for a long time!  When they all got in together I told Christine that was the "Lord help us" picture of the future. 

We are super enjoying spending time with family and getting to just chill and let the kids play together.  They have had so much fun playing zombie chase, Just Dance, and just being silly together.  None of us want to leave tomorrow, but I told Christine tonight that when Lyla is comfortable enough to disobey her (instead of just me) we will probably wear out our welcome soon anyway.  ;)  So we are off to Starkville tomorrow to see what trouble we can get into.  I did like the slogan on the "water tower" at the Children's Museum that said, "Exploring Mississippi the Magnolia State."  I feel like that's kind of what we're doing on this trip now that our plans got changed.  The new plan is to explore Mississippi and soak up family, and the country, and fun times with my girls.  I will note that as we were leaving the train station, the girls starting making up a song about being in the country and I had to remind them that we were in the middle of the largest city in Mississippi actually.  They just changed their song to "We're in the city, but it looks kinda like the country..."   :)