The complicated toaster and the people who use them

My mom bought us a new toaster for Christmas. When I opened it, I told her it felt like I was getting married. Toasters are soooo Bridal Shower, aren't they? Along with the blender. 

So we set up the toaster today, my husband and I, like newlyweds + the background of kids screaming for their dinner, and I figured I could just plug it in, stick in a frozen waffle and the kids would be nourished. Looks like these items have gotten high tech and come with directions - aka a 10-page user manual that actually contains four (4) lined pages for "notes."

Like I'm at a toaster convention and I need to jot down the best setting for my pumpernickel.

So for shits and giggles, I read it outloud starting with Step 1: remove the toaster from the packaging.

It reminded me of when my mom told me that newspapers are written at a 5th grade level. Toaster manuals are written for people who time traveled here from the year 1620.

I think we can safely assume that if you managed to pull out the directions from where they were hiding, chances are you've already taken the toaster out of the box.

Engrossed in all the different possible toast-concoctions and completely ignoring my kids pleads for food, I went straight to Frequently Asked Questions. 

A memorizing array of choices ...

I have a FAQ! Do you really think anyone is taking notes on your toaster? And you omitted the toast instructions for pumpernickel!

FAQ 1: My toast isn't toasting? Answer: have you checked to make sure the toaster is plugged in? Have you pressed down the lever? Have you taken the toaster out of the box?

FAQ 2: I like to spread my toast with peanut butter and then pop it in the toaster to melt a little. Is this okay? Answer: No. You are the reason offices have banned toasters from the tiny office kitchen. You are probably the same person who steals other peoples yogurt from the communal fridge.

The fact that this made it to the FAQ #2 spot right ahead of "what do I do now, my bread is jammed in the toaster!?" frightens me on the state of toaster-users across America. If you want to melt your PB that's what a microwave oven is for.

Now that's a manual I need to get my hands on!

Festivus!

It's Festivus and time for the the annual "Airing of Grievences!"

via cdn2.sbnation.com

 Now my airing of grievances -- surprise surprise -- could last all week and while so many do deal with my dear relatives, I decided to focus on one particular Grievence, not involving a "near & dear", of which I shall Air on this blog post.

Dear former Dentist,

Thank you for taking care of my teeth for the past 12 years and for selling your practice to a new dentist who gave me the heebie jeebies which sent me out in search of a new dentist. This new dentist was shocked that I had so many of my mercury fillings from grade school (ahem, 30 year old fillings) still in my mouth and took pictures showing all the decay around them. She also noticed a lot of other things ...

So thank you for doing such a bang-up job on my teeth these last 10 years when I had superb dental insurance, such as letting my teeth decay under 30 year old fillings. Now I have to have them all replaced under our new dental insurance that acts like it's a 10% off coupon.

Thank you and have a happy Festivus,

Unhappy smile

Am I in the wrong for being totally pissed off?  When a dentist tells you, "You're teeth look great!" you walk out with a skip in your step that you don't have to go back until 6 months later. When they do a filling, it gets done and you don't know if they failed to remove a mercury filling a millimeter away -- as my new dentist said, "You're tooth was numb, why not just remove the old filling?"

Grrr. Happy Festivus to you all!

She's at it again

I know I am insanely late with this, but I'm just now watching episodes of Project Runway from 3 years ago when I was too busy hallucinating on baby powder & prenatal vitamins, so cut me some slack.

When I saw this picture of Bethanny Frankel on FB eons ago --told you I was insanely late...eons! -- I immediately forwarded it to my playgroup friends with the title, "She's at it again!"

They understood what I meant because just a few days earlier, we were talking about Post Partum depression: who of us had it, how bad we had it, and what we think caused it. We all listed the usual reasons

• no sleep
• the shock of becoming a parent and the lifestyle change
• being at home all day alone
• a hard labor and even harder recovery
• trouble nursing
• trouble everything! 

But always one to crack a joke, I had one thing on my list that wasn't on anyone else's:

• Bethanny Frankel.

Her show on Bravo Lifetime cable channel I no longer have was airing while I was on maternity leave. This was her new show sans the other NY "Housewives" (of which none were actually housewives having watched the show in my pre-baby life), where she was married to some dude (not the same one from Housewives, pretty sure) and had a baby girl.

I will admit, in her defense (not that she needs it),  she wasn't 100% responsible for my post-partum sanity, but her TV show should have had a major disclaimer in NEON that advised new moms with babies under 3 months to change the station unless you intend to buy a new TV set because you will throw the remote at the screen.

It was in the middle of the afternoon when infants are supposed to be sleeping yet mine never did (again, I had trouble with everything) so I plopped myself on the couch, in the middle of a crazy messy house, with a crying baby, in a zombie-state induced by sleeping in 25-minute intervals, and I clicked on the TV. Bethany appeared, she had a new baby, I was intrigued. "Someone is going through what I am!" I cried (did I mention I was lonely?). "Maybe we can bond over the hardship of new motherhood?"

So I watched.

...a baby cries in the night. Bethanny sleeps on. The lights turn on and a night nurse gently wakes mom to nurse the baby. She does. When she finishes, the baby is put back in the arms of the night nurse and is whisked away. Our protagonist rolls over and goes back to sleep...

I'm not sure if I remember anything else because I think I blacked out. Or smashed the TV with the handle from the baby bouncer (or maybe I lifted that infernal baby swing over my head and crashed it down on top of the TV ... I just forget).

Night nurse? There are such things as night nurses?! Are they only for the Rich&Famous? What I would give to have a night nurse!!  An arm? My liver? Take them! Just give me that lady!!

Not this Night Nurse!!

via http://www.toonopedia.com/nightnrs.htm

 Alas, she wouldn't accept my kidney as payment and I was stuck doing all the work myself and getting no sleep. So every time I see Bethanny, I just think about how sad I felt and how envious I was of her night nurse. 

Seeing this picture ... I don't feel sad or envious anymore.

Recipe failure: Scones

If only I took a photo of each and every food failure I've stirred, sautéed, and sieved through, I'd have a coffee table book with my face and SUCKER written on the cover.

So why do I keep going back to random food blogs instead of my tried & true recipe books -- you know, the ones that had their recipes tested about 7 times before it got published? Because ... Food blogs are cool and so many of them have gorgeous photos, it's easy to get sucked in. They're like bad dates. You know the ones. You're 6th sense says to drop him, but you're bored (and hungry) and he's just that cute. So you call him, go to dinner, and erase his number from your phone in the lonely cab ride home after he spent the entire night talking about how much money he'll be making "one of these days" and isn't he so sophisticated because he drinks Manhattans and "wait did I tell you that story about my ex?" (Yes, I am describing my life before marriage & kids).

When I found this recipe to these gorgeous scones, I couldn't resist running to the store to buy everything. Juicey plump scones smothered in lemon icing just like the kind old Lazy Janes makes back in Madison. 

Blackberries aren't to be found this time of year so I subbed raspberries. So sue me. Does this mean I deserve what I got? I'm just a lady looking for some love -- scone-style love.

Their scones: sinfully delectable

My scones: what sin did I commit to end up with these?

Thanksgiving 2014

The new AllState Commercial ... did they read my blog?

Innocently watching some TV the other night -- which is so unlike me because at 8:30 p.m., once the kiddos doze off, I'm usually on the computer or dozing off myself -- I see an AllState Commerical called "Off Day" and I couldn't believe I was watching myself on TV!

Vacuuming up the hamster? 
OK, so no I've never done this but I have vacuumed up socks and my son's Spider-Man Lego this morning (note to self: fish it out of the vacuum canister). And I do intentionally vacuum up the kitchen table after a messy breakfast (a little nod of the head to 1983's Mr. Mom).

Street clothes on your daughter for Ballet?
Um, so me! Except in my case it was gymnastics class. All the cute toddlers were in their cutesy leotards and my daughter shows up in her street clothes like Biff (I dunno why I use this term, a nod of the head to the bully in 1985's Back to the Future maybe?). Were we supposed to dress them like Mary Lou Retton? Does it really matter what she was wearing because I spent the entire class chasing after her as she expertly dodged tumblers, vaulters, and legs of all kind. I, on the other hand, chased her onto a mat (that she sprinted across like Legolas -- Lord of the Rings reference here) but that I sunk into like quicksand and sprained my ankle (reminding me that I weigh just a tad bit more than everyone else there.) The sad thing was that I did this about 3 times before yelling, "Uncle!"

My favorite Biff line, "Now make like a tree and get outta here."

Ripping apart fluffy Teddy in the washing machine? 
I haven't done this but my husband has just asked to take over Laundry duty. What man, unless he's Ryan Gosling or Crazy, asks to do the household laundry? This should give you a picture of how laundry is done around here when it's on my watch. Crummy.

itsblogworthy.com

Smashing your car into a lampost?
Well no, but I did smash my car into another mom's minivan after a playdate in a fake parking lot. I say Fake, because it's a dead end street used as a parking lot which right there should absolve me from any smashing of minivans, but hasn't because our rates went up anyway.

"I should totally start a Blog"
OMG! I have!

Did they read my post on how great a MOM I am and make this commercial in my image?  We even have the same hair! Ok, where are my royalties!?

The discontinued Winnie the Pooh Party

It all started with my daughter's love for Winnie the Pooh and an innocent search on Pinterest. 

"Innocent search on Pinterest." I can just keep repeating that phrase over and over again because women all over the world are losing sleep after having discovered Pinterest. I can just hear some innocent mom's voice crying for help .... "I just searched on Pinterest and now I'm up until 2 a.m. making fondant snowflakes for 3 dozen Frozen cupcakes. It looked so easy?! WTF am I doing?!?"

For me, as I said earlier, it all started with my daughter's love for Winnie the Pooh and that Innocent Search on Pinterest and ...

Of course! A cute Winnie the Pooh party complete with cute honey inspired brunch items, little Winnie-the-Pooh cups and plates in cheery yellow ...

...signs of the Hundred Akre Wood and maybe even a beehive piñata...

 The possibilities were endless, the pictures filled our hearts...

  

...and my husband and I gushed --this even made him gush -- over the possibilities. 

Our backyard was the perfect place to host this magical Winnie-the-Pooh party for our soon-to-be 2 year old darling.  We already had a sandbox (the sandy pit where Roo plays), a deserted area on the other side of the fence (Eyore's Gloomy Place), and a vegetable garden (Rabbits Garden), in addition to a bench under the tree (Pooh's thoughtful spot).  We were set.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the road to dreams, Reality & Pinterest have a head on collision which happened when I ran into Party City with a sleeping child slumped over my shoulder looking for their Pooh section and they told me they "discontinued Pooh." Who discontinues Pooh? Children all over the world (or at least under my roof) are sleeping with the "one who's stuffed with fluff," dreaming of honey pots and bouncing Tiggers. Discontinued Pooh? Really?

I did what any Mom with 15 minutes of free time would do and I bought yellow plates and napkins and then promptly ignored any reference to Winnie-the-Pooh and the zillion awesome pins from party professionals of the rich-and-famous and hoped the guests (and my kids) would forget that I sent out Pooh invites telling them to come to the Hundred-Acre Woods for a party.

Top Row:  1.My daughter stares at her stuffed Pooh from her pink tablecloth 2. If I stick Piglet between the yellow silverware, does that count? 3. It was a perfect day for a Pik-nik. I.e we didn't have enough seats.
Middle Row: 1. My daughter playing in the Sandy Pit Where Roo Plays. 2. Our brunch - ignore the absence of honey-themed foods and ignore the clearance table cloth with a Circus theme. 3. Does chalk on the walkway count for a sign?
Bottom Row: 1. Whole Foods won't put Pooh on a cake ... will bees and a hive count? 2. Party-girl. 3. Was there not a champagne bar in the 100-Acre Woods? Did you check Owl's house?

When Driving 11 Hours is Totally Worth It

I hate road trips.

So when I booked a small intimate resort 8.5 hours away (Lost Lake Lodge in Nisswa, MN), my husband thought I'd gone off the deep end. What's 8.5 hours when there are cabins to sleep in, a private lake to swim in, award winning food to stuff your face in, and most of all, family memories to create??  I failed to  imagine that when I booked this adventure, I'd have a newly potty trained 26 month old with us and that 8.5 hours would turn into 11 hours.

Did I mention how I always hated road trips?

There's nothing like that family memory of hanging out on the side of the road watching your daughter take an enormous crap in her baby bjorn when we had just stopped at 17 different flushable toilets each time she cried "POOPY!" (or WOLF).

Once we arrived to our idyllic resort nestled in the birch forest and saw the hammocks hung on trees and a private lake with canoes, we bolted from the car like clowns in a circus and ran straight to the beach.

This is the kind of resort where your kids make friends with the kids staying in the next cabin, where they can run free and you're only kind of concerned, and where you don't have to keep them away from the TV because there are none!

Breakfast & Dinner is included which means you don't have to cook or decide where our next meal is coming from. And what a meal! 4-course dinners and 2-course breakfasts make sure no one is walking away hungry or needing a lunch.  The small private lake and beach on one side is tiny and perfect for little feet in the sand or in a rowboat, and the lake on the other side is perfect for renting that Pontoon boat you always thought you might want to buy (um, no). Ladder ball, basketball, and badminton are at the beach too, along with a "Garage" with pool tables and old time video games. And let's not forget some classics like shuffleboard and horse shoes.

 When not at the resort ... Head out and rent bikes to trek the Paul Bunyan Trail, try go-carting and mini-golf, and make sure to stop for some small mini-donuts made fresh on the bike trail.

At night, enjoy your dessert after diner -- liquored-up coffee -- and light the bonfire at the beach. The best part is that when you go get the matches at the front desk, they give you a bag with everything to make s'mores too!

Our son asked, "Is this vacation?" It is, and we'll always remember it. And it only took 10 hours to get home.

Cats for Sale

Dear Cats,
I'm listing you both on eBay. I've had enough. I just got done extricating a huge poop out of my daughter's underwear, and I come downstairs to find that you vomited all over the family room carpet. Haven't I had enough disgusting bodily functions for one day? I get boogers wiped on my shirt, sneezes blown in my face, and demands to have 2 different asses wiped clean of crap. Do I need your vomit too?

Keep petting me until I tell you to stop, which is never.

And while we're at it:

• I'm not feeding you at 3 a.m. so you both can stop meowing at the top of your lungs.
• Thank you for ripping a hole the size of a chipmunk in the screen trying to get out of the house.
• No, I'm not going to pet you for 2 hours after the kids fall asleep.
• Stop leaving furballs around the house the size of mice.
• I'm sick of dropping $200 every time I have to bring you to the vet
• I'm sick of dropping $100 every week for your damn special cat food because you have damn urinary crystals that may cause you to either pee on our bed or die.

That's all I can think of now and I will for sure be leaving all of this off my eBay listing and instead describe you two as "very furry, very lovable, cats who enjoy laying in your lap [digging their nails into your bare skin.]"

Putting an ad in the paper for Mary Poppins

My daughter fell off of her chair last night at dinner.

The whole thing took place in slow motion, and yet I'm still not sure how it happened. Her entire chair fell to its side, taking my daughter down and her dinner plate up in the air. As my luck would have it, we were having quinoa so the airborn plate created a quinoa rain shower over the dinner table. As the person nearest to her, I reached out my hand and clutched her leg just in time so that her fall was a little softer. Nevertheless she still ended up face down, belly down on the floor covered in quinoa and chicken. 

In this house, I would expect nothing less than for a tumble off a chair to create a mess the size of the tri-state area.

I only have 2 children, but everything in this house seems to be louder, messier, crazier than a house full of Dugans (they have what, like 19 kids?)

One day my aunt stopped by after an acupuncture appointment.  She could only stay for a few minutes. Now my aunt's house is so clean and quiet it's like visiting Jefferson's Monticello. I'm pretty sure she she attaches velvet ropes across all her rooms and only allows her family to occupy 3 rooms in the house. You can drop by without notice and it looks like no one but a curator and people dressed up in period wear pretending to stoke a fire live here.

So my aunt visits and probably spends about 15 minutes with me and the kids in which they run around, play with toys all over the floor, messily eat lunch, and probably have a tantrum over what color their plate was.  To which my aunt looked and me and says, "You need Mary Poppins."

"I thought the mom in Mary Poppins was a suffragette," I began, "not just plain suffering?"

My aunt also has 2 children and claims that they both took 3-hour naps until they were 7 and never played with dirt and never got food on the floor and ... Well, we all know that parents suffer from amnesia when it comes to their kids. So I'm enjoying my messy house, my messy dinners, and my messy kids knowing that one day I'll be telling them, "I don't know why your children are Gila Monsters? You guys were so quiet and played so nice and never made a mess or threw your food."

One day.

Organizing Photos into a Photo Album

I completed my first Photo Album as well as organized my entire photo collection ... from 2011.

Alright, I realize it's mid-2014 here but I made a dent in the 14,000 photos taking up precious space on my hard drive, so I feel like I should be wearing a tiara or that crown from Burger King. Tackling these photos was a monster -- iPhoto is just another basement where I throw stuff I don't want to deal with.

What inspired this project was a Pin on Organizing Photos. You can read her post (which is awesome and in great detail, but she talks about printing photos which I gave up on), or you can read my version (the lazy blogger version). Take your pick.

How to:

iPhoto sorted by Month/Year

1. Sort Photos: All of my photos were in iPhoto already sorted by month/year. If yours aren't, do that first. (Also don't forget to grab your husbands phone and get his photos into your library).

 2. Cull Photos: This is the hard part, and took me a long time. I basically went through each month 3-4 different times at different time periods and deleted photos. For instance: August 2011 started with 275 photos, after 4 different deleting sessions over a few weeks/months, I got it down to 128. Some months I got down to 50, but that's like March when nothing happens.

I kept my progress detailed in my spiral notebook of which months I did, where I left off, etc so I could pick up at any time.

If you have time ... you can also crop and fix all your photos. I meant to do this but time just escaped. I agree that any photo I did crop looked better. Oh well. I'm not Ansel Adams.

How long did this take? I started deleting photos in December 2013 and finished March 2014.

3. Start Photo Book: There's a few to choose from. I made mine through Shutterfly choosing the softcover, Year in Review model. Now if I thought deleting photos took a long time, making the book took even longer. It's online and ended up being 94 pages so it crashed a lot on me and was also slow to load. Then creating the pages themselves just took a lot of time, effort, and brain power -- which I was working mostly after 9PM and my brain officially shuts down at 5PM.



This I also kept detailed in the spiral notebook, listing which months were made vs which months were now finalized.

I started the book in March and finished June 1st. The book arrived today: June 11th.

Notice the 1st page where I left the stock wording ...


4. Back-up photos: Once the book was sent off to the publisher, I resized all the photos (some were like 3MB) and then put them all both on a DVD and on my external back-up drive. And they came off my computer.

Some notes on making a Photo Book:

1. Online the photos look smaller: Seeing the pages now, I wish I hadn't done some of the 2-photo pages or the larger photos. The small sized photos looked like postage stamps online but they ended up being perfect size to capture a series of photos from a vacation, or holiday.

Like did I really need this ginormous photo of my cat?


2. I like the pre-done pages: This party page was a pre-set idea page you can choose and I like how that turned out. It's hard to have the time to stylize 94 individual pages.


Here's another one -- vacation.


3. It's expensive: Look for coupons and deals. If you don't need it right away, sit on your finsihed book until a deal comes. Mine was ready around Father's Day so there was free shipping and discounts. Even then, the 94 pages came to over $60. But I figures, printing each photo and buying books would be around the same thing.

4. I wish the spine wasn't blank: This will end up on my bookshelf so I wish the spine had the title from the front.

Final Verdict: I like the book a lot but I like trying other things so for 2012, I'm trying MyPublisher. So far it's not as "cutesy" as the Year in Review pages and doesn't have pre-done pages with their "bling" but I'm okay with that. I can compare them when I get this done ... next year.

The Money Pit strikes again

This winter we celebrated 9 years of living in The Money Pit. My husband and I can't believe we've lasted this long: this house is one big headache. But something called "excellent schools" and "terrible resale value" is making us stay put and the house is very happy eating away at our savings account one check at a time.

This week I wrote out a check for a new, professionally installed window well cover.

This window well used to hide under a splintering, decrepit wood porch that we finally took down 2 years ago to make way for a patio and now it's exposed for our kids to jump on. So we put a cover on it. Done.

before

Two years and many rain storms, heat waves, and -20 degree days later, we finally had a nice day with the kids playing in the backyard. Nice, until Caligula my daughter took one look at it and decided to pretend it was a bounce house ... and fell right through --- 3-1/2 feet down into the well!

With Cerberus, her Trio of Bears on guard

Luckily the bottom was soft-- or at least that's what my husband said from inside. He saw the whole thing happen and dove in to rescue her -- right after throwing his glass of beer up in the air.  We were so lucky the cracked piece didn't cut her ... I'm still in shock over the whole thing.

Anyway, after kindly refusing my dad's offer of covering it with a sheet of plywood which he would gladly bring over from his collection of "bits & fragments of the last 50 years" stashed in his garage, we were on the phone with a window well company and had it promptly installed.  Voila.

After

 The warranty says "lifetime" and the weight max is 250lb.  We'll see.

Kids for Hire

What I've learned from watching Disney's Cinderella is that washing your floors on your hand & knees is the best method. Singing while washing, however, does not make it more enjoyable -- nor does it summon birds and mice to my aid.

-------------

Today I was on my hands and knees wiping the bathroom floor because, according to the Cleaning Schedule of my role as Household Sanitation Director (AKA the unpaid maid), this should have happened on Tuesday.

My son walks in, "Can I help?" (Queue the theme song from Chariots of Fire)

Never one to turn down cleaning help and a firm believer that misery deserves company, I hand him a rag, point to the bathroom sink full of soapy water, and put him to work.

I expected -- well what I expected was for him to act like how I did as a kid which was to pretend I didn't see my mom cleaning and walk the other way. But no, he helped me clean the whole floor (which is quite small but nonetheless) and then asked if he could clean the cabinets too ("of course!"). From there we moved to the bedroom floor because I had a captive audience and I was not against exploiting the moment. Plus, they were really dusty.

Capturing this once in a lifetime moment.

 My daughter stayed away for the most part. When she did pop her head in, my son told her, "I have so much work to do!" Believing this to be a party she wasn't invited to, and being a known party crasher even at her tender age of 23 months, she grabbed the nearest thing (a bath towel) and got down on her knees and started to clean too.

Looking at my two pride & joys, I felt just a wee twinge of guilt -- and a lot like Cinderellas Evil step-mother -- but what the hell, my floors are clean and I didn't have to pay bribe anyone to do it.

Kiawah Island

The 2nd leg of our journey took us to Kiawah Island.

I didn't have high hopes after my son shielded his eyes exiting the airport screaming,"There's too much sun!" We've been holed up like hermits in Chicago this Fall, Winter, and let's just add Spring to the list too... Sun is new to these kids.

I agonized over this part of the vacation. There's only about 4,000 rental options to choose from and we had never been before so you're trusting your gut. Good thing mine is full of probiotics.

A few things to know about Kiawah:

1. It's a private island. You need to be staying on the island, or know someone who is, to get on (same for neighboring Seabrook). And even when you're on, there are places you can't go (Vanderhorst Plantation).

If you want to do a beach day on Kiawah and you're not staying on the island, Beach walker Park is open to the public.

2. There are alligators. There are lagoons and signs that say "Danger! Don't feed or bother the alligators." As if! We stayed on the lagoon and saw them a few times. There are also a lot of bugs ... they are the kind you don't seems to see and then you looks down and have 20 bug bites on your legs.

Our alligator swimming in the lagoon

3. The pools are for resort privileges only. This means that if you rent a condo, make sure it has these privileges to enjoy the pools. And I recommend it if your kids are little - the pools are 0-depth and are mini splash parks.

West Side Beach pool

 The beaches however are beautiful! Wide open with boardwalks over dunes to preserve the natural terrain. The sand is very fine and will stick to everything!

4. Bikes. Rent them! You won't regret it! We rented ours for our 3 full days there and it took us everywhere we wanted to go. The bike paths are paved nice and pretty easy to follow (we got lost a little - well not lost but more like our paths always went straight to the beach!) You can also bike on the beach if your thighs need a workout.

5. Not too many restaurants.  The resort restaurants were expensive but lovely. We ate at Jasmin's Porch for dinner and Mother's Day brunch. But we also ate poolside one afternoon and the food was good and reasonable. There are a few good restaurants nearby, so we had dinner on John's Island at Fat Hen -- I sucked the LowCounty Lemonade down. Freshfields is right at the island entrance and has a few restaurants and grocery store too.

Mothers Day Brunch on the Terrace

I need one of these right now.

Where did we decide to stay?  Condo on the ocean? 10-bedrom villa in Vanderhorst Plantation? In the end we chose a 2-story townhouse across the street from the beach that had resort pool priviledges which we rented through VRBO.com. The actual Kiawah island resort managed the property (even though it was owned privately) which made check in/out a breeze and we weren't worried about being scammed.  Next time we go, we feel that we can stay further from the beach and bike there (if it saves money).

On the balcony for Mothers Day

Home Away from Home

 This was a great place to come visit and we know we'll be back and as the kids get older there will be different and exciting stuff to do -- like fishing for crabs and maybe an alligator tour?