SCHOFIELD FAMILY BLOG: Last Minute Getaway! (Part 1)

So, many of you know the whole fiasco about Frank's and my trip to Mexico to see my cousin get married. But if not, I'll try to be brief...Frank and I planned a trip to Mexico to see my cousin get married last November. Well, we had asked my brother and his wife to watch the kids, but unknown to us, my parents called them to let them know they'd watch the kids instead. Well, then the whole swine flu thing broke out. We thought we wouldn't go, but the area we were to be traveling too had no swine flu cases, so we'd still go. Then my mom had emergency gall bladder surgery, and my brother and his wife made other plans. So, my older brother was going to fly in to watch the kids, but then threw out his back at work and couldn't move very well, he also didn't think it was a good idea for us to travel with the flu outbreak. Then we asked a few neighbors, but the kids would be going from house to house to house all over the neighborhood while we were gone, and we didn't feel comfortable doing that, so we cancelled!

The problem was that our flight tickets had to be used by December 9th, and our vacation week we had a coupon for had to be used by October. Since Frank isn't going to have vacation days saved up in the new district like he does now, we decided we still needed to get away somewhere warm. So we checked California, but the coupon wasn't good there, and I couldn't find any tickets on Continental. But Florida was! Frank's grandma lives in Tampa, and there was available rooms and flights there, so we bought three more tickets for the kids less than a week from departure, and left for Florida on Monday, May 11th, and flew home Saturday, May 16th.

We had a fairly good time, but there were many times when the kids would get very grumpy over the silliest things because they were hot and tired and we'd look at each other and say, "What were we thinking?!" I must say, if you don't absolutely need to travel with four children under the age of seven across the country....DON'T!!! Actually, for the most part they were really good. Maleah was an excellent traveler, the boys did pretty well too, but our busy little Kennedy was hard to keep entertained on the flights.

Once there, we had a good time in the pool and just hanging out in the hotel room. We had a little patio where long tailed gray squirrels and duck gathered several times a day, and kids loved it! It hadn't rained for several days, but once we got there , it rained every afternoon at about 3:30 and lasted for a few hours. On the Tuesday we were there, a huge storm rolled in, and it even hailed! The hail was the size of quarters! I'm so glad we weren't out in it! It's a good thing we did a morning pool play time, or we would've been in the resort room all day. On Wednesday we drove to Clearwater to visit Frank's grandma and aunt and uncle. We were there for about four hours and had an enjoyable visit. When we got back to the hotel, we swam and watched a movie.

Pierce and Kennedy on the plane