tybee island: part one

So sometimes you go on vacation and it rains the whole time and you're like, 'Blah, what a waste of a vacation. This is the worst. I could have watched it rain from my living room couch.' And it's all very American (not in the patriotic, hardworking, proud, live-free-or-die sense but in the way Europeans say, 'Oh, you're from America'--not good way) and entitled and whiny. 

But then, I think, maybe vacation is the best time to enjoy the storm-filled parts. Sitting on a big porch surrounded by loved ones--laughing and chatting and playing games. Sometimes just sitting in awe of the sheer power of a storm and the sense of God's presence you get in those moments. 

Watching babies play in the curtains.

Hoping the baby doll stroller races last long enough to keep them entertained but not long enough that any one gets hurt.

Swatting at mosquitoes that somehow get through the screen to find your overly-sensitive-to-mosquito-bites-child.

Not caring that your kids' rompers aren't buttoned up because they're fancy, oh-so-southern rompers from Grandma that have actual buttons and not snaps. And it's a good day when snaps even get done around here. 

Leaving your girls on the porch for a minute with some aunts and uncles and cousins only to come back to them acting sooooo American. {Just kidding. They're babies. They're allowed to cry on vacation whether it rains or snows or whatever. Big people are not. And just to clarify I love America and being an American--in the live-free-or-die, hardworking, compassionate, patriotic sense of being an American. Just not in the entitled, whiny way. Yeah?}

In the end, we spent a lot of our vacation on that porch really listening to the storms and God and each other. And I wouldn't trade it.  I love a good storm or five. We had a little beach time, a little Savannah time, and a whole lot of family time. So who could complain? And we did get to steal some moments in the pool, in between storms that churned up the water and left it too chilly for us but not too chilly for a couple 20-month-old girls. They keep us living on the edge.