Puerto Rico and Tampa

Wow playing catch up is brutal I'll try to just be better at staying up to date on my posts:) We arrived safely in Tampa only to turn around early the next morning and take Danny to the airport to catch his flight to Puerto Rico. My parents stuck around for the majority of the week though to help out with the kids and just to play. And man did we play:) We spent a day down in Sebring, FL visiting my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Stan and getting a taste of the sweet Florida retired life. I tell you what, there is a reason so many people retire to Florida and it isn't just the weather. The Sebring Diner was kickin', no joke. It's like spring break only it's in the winter... and Bingo replaces some of the other activities:). I keep telling Danny, we're already half way to the sweet life, we own a bus and he plays golf every day.
We had a blast once we got back to Tampa as well. We hit the park, story time at the local library and Chic-fil-a (like three times, someday ask me to get on my chic-fil-a soap box... I'm a fan) One of the highlights of the week was going to Clearwater Beach. We weren't planning on swimming so we came a little unprepared but the boys didn't seem to mind and by the time we left were strutting around in their underoos for all the coeds down there on spring break. We had such a fun week with my parents and they saved me from a week of way too many chick flicks and at least a carton of icecream.
Due to a very fortunate delayed flight my parents didn't leave until Friday morning and due to an almost as fortunate missed cut (at least for me) I got Danny home Friday night. So you see things worked out just swimmingly>We had a blast Saturday with Danny. We took the boys to the Tampa children's museum and burned a good 3 hours there and then came home for a sports marathon. These consist of Jack and Patton getting into the bay of our bus where we store all of our athletic equipment and systematically removing one ball at a time until they've played every sport imaginable and then we all go inside and crash. They're very fun! Danny told me I have to stop praying for him to miss the cut but if we keep having as much fun as we have been on Saturdays I just don't see that happening:) Sunday we went to church at a ward there in Tampa and I got to teach primary. I overheard a poor Primary president frantically trying to cover for 4 missing teachers so I told her if they would let me take Patton to nursery (he's still a month shy of being legit) than I would teach. I had a fun time with the 7-8 year olds and it was good for me to get to contribute at church (something I really miss believe it or not).
That afternoon we moved the bus up to the golf course (we had been staying at an RV park) where they were letting us park for the week. But this gets me into the next week so I'll start a new post for that...

Palm Beach- The Honda

Palm Beach Florida, so beautiful! Since I am a bit of a slacker and didn't post last week I'll just have to do my best to remember what we did. Mondays are ususally my set up days or "normal" days if you will. I clean, go to the grocery store, take the kids to the park while Danny practices. Then he comes home from work to some gormet meal:) and we eat discuss the day and then have family night. These days are so nice because they give me a small taste of my life back at home, the normalcy I so often crave. Tuesdays I try to take the kids to do something fun...this week was the pool. We had a fun time swimming except when Jack boldly decided he could handle the deep end without floaties and jumped off the ladder. I have to give him props for his courage, well that is after I caught my breath from bolting across the pool to pull his cute little head above water again and calmed down from my minor heart attack:)

We were parked next to 5 or 6 other busses with other families of golfers and so we had a little neighborhood to play with in the evenings. We got out the basketball hoop and the bounce house and just had fun hanging out outside with the other families.
Wednesday started off with a massage (always a good way to start off a day). Occasionally they'll give the wives some spa credit which is definately one of my favorite perks. Afterwards the boys and I drove down to Ft. Lauderdale to get my parents who came into town for the week. We grabbed dinner at a fun little Japanese Steakhouse and then headed home to get ready for the tournament the next day.

Thursday and Friday were the tournament. The wind was completely crazy which made things particularly exciting and while Danny didn't play exactly how he wanted he still maintained his incredible attitude and just picked himself up and started getting ready for the next week. He really is incredible. Allow me my sappy moment. He has an incredibly intense, high pressure job where if you have a bad day at work thousands of people know and have an opinion on it and yet none of that seems to phase him. It takes some pretty amazing focus and mental strength and yet he has just kept working and progressing and staying optimistic keeping his eye on the big picture. What a man!! End sappy note:) Anyways the good thing about missing the cut is that we got to play with him again on Saturday:) We went to the coolest place called "Lion Country Safari". It is a drive through zoo basically except the animals are just wandering free (not the lions though) right outside your car in a more natural environment so you can see them interacting with other of there kind in a more real setting. Soooo cool!!! We saw ostriches, zebras, rhinos within 10 yards of our car. Crazy stuff. After the drive through safari we went to the little amusment park and rode rides, fed birds and giraffes and just walked around looking at more animals. It was such a fun day and my boys were in heaven...ok who am I kidding us adults were loving it just as much!! That night Grandma and Grandpa watched the boys so Danny and I could go on a long overdue date. So much fun to get to just hang out with my sweet man!
Sunday we went to church in Palm Beach and then drove home down the A1A (Ocean Ave) and packed up and headed to Tampa...

Across the Country in 7 Days

So, last entry was in LA and now I'm sitting in Palm Beach Florida. The two mighty oceans serving as bookends to one heck of a week:) That almost bordered on poetic, and you were starting to think I was fairly illiterate based on the amount of typos usually found in my posts:)

Anyways, it was one heck of a week. And in order to tell it all I'll break it up into chapters.

Chapter 1: Phoenix

We started off our 45 hour drive by tackling the six hour drive to Phoenix. As I've mentioned previously Danny's brother Boyd and his family live down there and there is also a TPC (Tournament Players Club?) or a course for Danny to practice on as well as being the headquarters for PING (Danny's sponser) so it just made sense to stop there for a while. It ended up being even better because Mom and Dad Summerhays came down to visit as well. During the day the boys and I hung out with Grandma Summerhays, Barbara Jean (Boyd's wife) and their kids while Danny, Lynn (Danny's dad) and Boyd practiced.

Some of our highlights include playing in the bounce house in front of the motor home, going to the McCormick Railroad Park and riding on the train as well as the carousel, playing at Boyd and Barji's neighborhood playground and having lunch at Chick-fil-a almost every day. Life is good! Our last evening there the dads watched the kids and Mom, Barji and I had a girls night out with pedicures and dinner. So fun!!

Chapter 2: Phoenix to Houston

We left Phoenix on Thursday afternoon and set out on our 18 hour segment of the drive towards Houston. The big event of that night was Jack's "tummy ache" that turned into a night of dashing for the bowl as soon as I heard Jack moan "mommy". Any parent will understand the plight it was just accentuated by our being in such tight quarters and by driving into the wee hours of the night. Fortunately it seemed to be just something he ate because the next morning he was very happily sipping back on his 7-up and pedialyte and didn't have any other issues:) We ended up stopping in a Wal Mart parking lot in Ft. Stockton, TX (the only Wal Mart for hundreds of miles. There isn't a whole lot going on in Western Texas for any who didn't already know this) and driving the rest of the way to Houston the next morning.

Chapter 3: Houston

We had a short but action-packed Friday night and Saturday morning with the Diehl family (Danny's sister Mary and her family). In true Cousin Eddie style (see Christmas Vacation) we backed all 45 feet of our bus into their driveway and plugged in to one of their outlets. Although we took over the whole driveway and hung out into the road a bit, I know deep, deep down inside the neighbors thought we were pretty cool:) Jack and Patton had a blast running around with their cousins and we got to catch up with Mary and Mike. Saturday morning they took us out on a lake by their house in their canoe which was tons of fun. However the fun was short lived since we were now to Saturday and still had another 18 hours to Palm Beach.

Chapter 4: Houston to Palm Beach

We drove...alot... and then drove some more:) While the stops definitely broke up the 45 hours a ton, in the end it was still 45 hours on the road. We still managed to have fun though by reading books, watching movies, playing play dough, coloring and watching more movies. We stopped at a Walmart in DeFuniac Springs, Florida and went to church there the next morning (In DeFuniac Springs not Walmart:)). After church we hit the road again and drove all the way into Palm Beach. We got in about 8:30 (about 1 hour before our eta thanks to Danny's amazing driving skills) and got set up once again for another week.

So while it was a ton of driving it was so nice to have a little more low key week without having the stress of a tournament. We spent some fun time with extended family as well as a lot of quality time with just the four of us... the road warriors as we like to call ourselves:) Anyhow, we are now safe in Florida and will let you know how it goes next week. Til then...