Florida!

So I thought some of you might like to know what on earth I was doing in....FLORIDA! Well, my parents go there every May to spend a week at West Palm Beach with my sister, Lisa and her family and since this year everything is changing and I'm throwing all sense of rational thinking out the window, I decided (in a brave moment) to take the kids and go! After all, we've done everything crazy, including leaving our Charter school and attending the neighborhood schools, which was a huge leap of faith that is working out just fine.

Anyhow, on Sunday, May 10 we loaded up the kids and drove to the airport and boarded a plane headed for Orlando! Once we arrived in Orlando, we climbed inside a 14 passenger van (the kind I probably should be driving) with my parents and my brother Lane and two of his girls, Lauren and Danielle, and drove 3.5 hours to West Palm. The babies did incredibly well! I was so grateful (and so prepared with a ginormous diaper bag and oodles of formula and rice cereal, etc.).

We had so much fun swimming and playing in the sand and even though it was so much work to be there, I enjoyed doing the work THERE at the beach rather than HERE in the rain! The kids had so much fun with their cousins, especially the boys, whose only male cousins on the Halversen side are Lisa's boys. They played and played and played sunup until sundown! And wouldn't you know that Dave left the cameras in the back of the car in Utah so we don't have any pics to share?! We'll get some sent to us and then I'll share.

Dave had to come home Thursday for a retreat with his company that he needed to be at, so I was left to travel home without him! That didn't go quite so smoothly, but the other passengers put up with us quite tolerably, even when Ben decided he couldn't fly for another moment without a window seat, or Eden (my non-binky baby) spit "raspberry-style" all over everyone because she was way over-stimulated and couldn't fall asleep. Going through the airport was hilarious, especially security..."You have HOW MANY KIDS?" or "Are all of these yours?" I loved it! Yup, they're mine, and I KNOW I HAVE MY HANDS FULL, AND YES, I'M BRAVE, AND YES, THREE BABIES!

By the way, what exactly do people mean to say when they tell me that I have my hands full? For some reason people state that most obvious fact all the time to me. I personally have never said that to anyone else, but it feels like they are saying, "Holy crap you are so in over your head. How are you going to manage for the rest of your life? I hope you're not having any more kids because I don't think you can possibly handle the ones you've got!" So I'm not sure exactly what they are insinuating when they share this most obvious fact, but yes my hands are full, and BETTER FULL THAN EMPTY! Guess what else is full?!! My heart!

But the best comments I received were from 3 different, unrelated strangers in Florida. One I saw coming off the elevator who saw the babies and said, "Oh you are so blessed!" Then at the pool another woman said upon hearing my story, "God bless you...Oh, He already has!" The third was a woman who sat by us on the plane and helped hold babies for quite some time who complemented my on my children's good behavior (we fooled her, alright) and said how she admired our family and how our children will benefit so much from their relationships with each other, from learning to give and take, and support each other to learning to share space and belongings (of course she wasn't there when they wanted each other's goggles...MINE! NO THEY'RE MINE!) to being responsible for themselves. Okay, I will give them that...I made it very clear to them that if they didn't keep track of their own luggage that they wouldn't have clothing and swimwear to use in Florida!

Anyhow, there are a few people out their who think the gigantic Tate clan is pretty neat. And you know what? With all our foibles and folly, I'm still one of them! So Florida was terrific, even if I came home exhausted, and I'm so glad I seized the opportunity to go. Courage is always rewarded!