Wood You Believe?: Our trip to Jacksonville

Last weekend I drove to Jacksonville with Rachel and the boys to visit Chris and Carrie, Rebecca, Colin and Annie. It was a really nice weekend and I'm glad we took the time to drive down there. It was a pretty easy drive. I think it's the longest car ride the boys have been on, but they did really well. Fortunately I had Rachel with me to feed them snacks and tend to them (mostly Simon) when it was really needed, otherwise it surely would have taken me longer to go by myself. We only had to stop twice on the way down. And the second time we were actually only about 20 minutes from Chris' house, but Simon was REALLY insisting that he needed to go potty, so we pulled over for that and I'm glad that we did! He was holding it and really needed to go!

On Saturday we made an excursion to St. Augustine. We first stopped at the shrine of Our Lady of La Leche which is on really beautiful grounds. Then we walked around historic St. George street, visited the Cathedral and enjoyed some ice cream. We also went to the beach for a little while which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. I'd like to go back to St. Augustine sometime for a family vacation. It is rather touristy, but at least the attractions are mostly historical and/or religious. There were tons of things to do there!

We also visited a pet store that specializes in reptiles so that Joseph could see an alligator as that is one of the hooks we used to get him excited about going to Florida. (The alligator farm was shockingly expensive. Fortunately a pet store is worth a million bucks to Joseph.) They had a lot of great specimens: frilled lizards, a gila monster, large iguana and monitor lizard, a couple of small alligators, turtles, tortises, snakes and many more. There were even a few interesting mammals such as a tamarin monkey, pot bellied pig and "hairy dog" (prairie dog.) Unfortunately this pet store, called "Blazin' Reptiles," also had blazin' oil lamps burning with exposed flame about two feet from the floor within easy reach of small children. Simon burned his finger extinguishing the flame of one particularly malpositioned oil lamp. The lady at the store who seemed to be a manager or owner was shockingly unapologetic and unconcerned about Simon's injury. When I calmly suggested she put her oil lamps some place safer like behind the counter or on a high shelf she complained what "a constant battle it is for that if she doesn't have the oil lamps then people complain about the smell... " CRY ME A RIVER! Needless to say, I left feeling pretty angry about her attitude. I would have felt a lot better if she had simply given a sincere apology over the fact that my son had gotten hurt. I wrote an email to the City Council's Committee on Public Health and Safety, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

Joseph has said a few times since returning home how he misses Uncle Chris and really wants to go back to Jacksonville. Hopefully we'll be able to go back in the future!
Thanks again Chris and Carrie for your hospitality and generosity!