A slice of my Florida life
Are you tired of all my melon posts yet? Whew! I was worried you might be.
I was so excited when I went to check on my honeydew plants the other day! They have flowers!! The plants themselves seem very small though and I’m wondering if they’ll actually get melons. For now I’m hopeful.
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We’ve always had a microwave. From our first apartment that had three total rooms (plus a bathroom) to our huge house that we recently sold. Now, in our new, smaller home, there is no microwave. My last one was an over-the-stove built in deal so I couldn’t bring it with me. I think I knew there wasn’t a microwave, but I figured we just buy one after we got moved in…except we didn’t. To put one over the stove would require some work. There are cabinets there and they would need to be moved and we would have to do some wiring and it just seems like a lot of work right now plus the actual cost of the microwave. We talked about a counter top one, but counter space is very limited and I didn’t want another object taking up room on the counter (along with the Keurig
(don’t worry, I make coffee in it too!). for heating things up too (and for cooking things).That’s not to say we won’t get one in the future, but for now, it works for me.
What about you?
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One day, I noticed that my then 5 year old was only smiling with half his mouth. My first thought was that he had seen a cartoon character do it and thought it was cool. I asked him to smile normally. He smiled with a half smile. I didn’t think much more of it. The next day he was still doing it and I was slightly annoyed that he wouldn’t smile his normal smile. That evening hubby asked him to wink. He winked with one eye and said he couldn’t do the other one. Hmmmm, normally he can wink either eye and he thinks it’s funny because I can’t. We asked him to shut both eyes tight. He could squeeze one shut, but not the other. Now we were worried! A quick internet search turned up Bell’s Palsy. The next day I made an appointment with our pediatrician to confirm the diagnosis and see what caused it. She said that a lot of times no cause is found, but one of the causes can be Lyme disease. She went through a whole list of questions to see if he had been bitten and we didn’t realize what it was. We couldn’t think of any bites and we definitely hadn’t noticed any ticks on him. We did mention that on a recent camping trip, there were a lot of mosquitoes and it was possible that what we thought was a mosquito bite may have actually been a tick bite. Off to the hospital lab I went with a very unhappy 5 year old! Fortunately there was no line and the nurses were very efficient and friendly. A few days later, we got the results – Lyme disease. The cure was simply to continue the 21 days of antibiotics we had received at the first appointment. We were relieved, but we also realize the importance of checking the kids (and ourselves) for ticks after spending time outdoors.
Part of camping is being outdoors and frequently in the woods. Along with annoying mosquitoes and other bugs are ticks. One of the diseases that ticks carry is Lyme disease. The best way to prevent Lyme is to use a bug spray that contains at least 20% DEET especially during warmer months when ticks are more active. For more information on preventing and/or diagnosing Lyme disease, see the CDC’s website.
We recently downsized. Besides the obvious – a smaller house, there were some other unexpected downsizes.
Obviously a smaller house won’t work for everyone, and I wouldn’t have believed it would work for us either! We used to live in a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, 1400 square foot home. As we had our three kids, it felt like the house was getting smaller and smaller. When we moved, we wanted bigger – bigger house, bigger (attached) garage, bigger yard. We got bigger – 3 big bedrooms (plus plenty of room in the basement for a couple more), 2.5 bathrooms, an attached 2 car garage, almost an acre of ground with a nice portion fenced in. The house was just over 3900 square feet – plenty of room for three kids and all their stuff. It did work for a while, but then it was just big and we weren’t very content. I didn’t get along with our neighbor. We didn’t use all the space in our house. We were tired of snow and being cold. There was nothing holding us there – no family nearby and hubby was ready for a job change. So, we prayed and listed our house. Long story short – it took over a year to sell, but in the mean time we were able to pay cash for a smaller house in Florida (hello endless summer!).
Having less space to take care of means more time for:
For that extra time, I am grateful!
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Our trips to Assateague Island are the ones I remember the most. It’s one place that I want to take my family. We would go every fall after school had started. My mom would get my work for the week and I would work on it in the evenings. When I got older (maybe around 4th grade) and there was too much school work, we would go right after school got out in June.
The best part about it was camping yards from the beach! I remember playing on the beach which was less crowded because it was later in the season (although I don’t remember it ever being very crowded). One time we camped in a site that had a path to the playground. We wrote down the number and my dad would request it every year after that. My brother and I loved that we could run down the path to the playground. It was all primitive camping – no water, no electric. We would fill up with water on the way in and then at some point during the week, we would have to unhook to dump the gray & black tanks and get more water.
I remember going crabbing at the Ferry Landing. I don’t know that we caught enough to feed the four of us very often, but when we did, mmmmmm!! They were tasty! I also remember crabbing on an island and the tide came up and the foot bridge that we crossed was underwater. I think my mom and brother had gone back to the camper and I stayed with my dad to crab some more. Anyway, I was pretty surprised that the bridge was gone. I’m guessing he carried me back…I don’t remember that part.
I do remember the mosquitoes! One of the parks sprayed for mosquitoes and one didn’t. They were bad either way and we always had bug spray and sunscreen on.
I remember that we had mice one year. There must’ve been a nest in one of the storage compartments under the benches in the back. Those benches converted to a bed that my parents used. Poor Mom discovered the mice – one of them ran across her pillow in the night! We set traps and I think we caught 5 total.
Feeding the seagulls was always fun too. If we had stale bread (or probably some that wasn’t stale) or leftover pancakes, we fed it to the seagulls. I remember the ponies and even though they were supposedly mean, I don’t remember them ever bothering us.
Something I didn’t know anything about as a kid was the cost. When we first started going to Assateague Island it was $2.50/night for a primitive site (that’s all they had). The last time we went (in 1988) it was $15/night for a primitive site. Now at Assateague Island, the National Park is $20/night ($16 in the off season) for primitive sites and the State Park is $30/night (primitive) or $40/night (electrical).
What’s your favorite childhood memory?