The Reality of Vacation

So we finally went on our trip to the Charleston/ Savannah area. The kids were off for a few days for the Teacher’s Convention in NJ. The weather outlook was looking good! We were expecting 80’s during the day cooling to about 55 at night. Pretty nice for this time of year. This trip was cancelled last year due to a hurricane in the area so I was determined to make this happen.

The stars were aligning. My husband was able to take a few days. Flights were easy and fairly inexpensive. We were using points at the hotels. I had done my research looking at so many Pinterest posts and beautiful blogs (secretly hoping mine would some day look just as nice.)

Three days before the trip we got a letter from the school nurse. Lice was going around. Just a nice little FYI that no parent likes to get. I went into french braid and essential oil mode on my daughter. I wasn’t playing. It was Friday and we made it through.

The next day (two day before the trip) my daughter said she had a sore throat. Again I’m not playing so we went right to the urgent care. Possible coxsackie. What?! No medicine for that one but with a possible ear infection we got some antibiotics. It’s always what you aren’t expecting.

We decide to go on the trip because my daughter was feeling much better. We arrive in sunny Charleston with no issue except for sitting next to a someone that was not cooperative with the flight crew and obviously not well.

We drove to Savannah from there. Savannah was beautiful and so different from anywhere I’ve been before. The kids weren’t enthralled with it. I promised them that if we did all the highlights of Savannah in 24 hours then we’d go to the beach. There’s a reason why most of the blogs just had happy couples walking around town. After successfully completing this goal, we headed for Hilton Head.

Hilton Head was beautiful. Weather was perfect. We were right on the beach and we were pretty much the only ones in the heated resort pool. Amazing. We had plans to ride bikes on the beach the next day before heading back to Charleston. That night it hit me… food poisoning. Had to be. My Pinterest plans of biking on the beach and then hanging out at the pool with a cocktail in hand turned into research on how to make it in the car to Charleston without an issue.

I loaded up on Pepto, mints and gingerale just hoping I’d make it. I did. It was fine. We made it to beautiful Charleston in 2 hours. I was afraid to eat so most of my research was unneeded. I hoped we were in the clear though. We stayed at a beautiful resort for the first 2 nights. We had planned to stay the last night near the hotel since we had to be at the airport by 5am. The goal was enjoy the whole day at the nice resort and go out at night then just sleep at the airport hotel. That’s when the plan changed again. My son started with the same gross symptoms that I had. Poor guy. It definitely wasn’t food poisoning. I think plane guy gave us the stomach bug.

We wound up having to check out and check into the airport hotel. It was not as pictured! Our plan was thrown out the window. We were going to basically be sitting in a tiny room with a sick kid all day. I wound up calling the hotel we had been at and they offered us a room with just a king for all four of us. We enthusiastically agreed and made it work. This saved vacation.

Did I want my blog to be about perfect vacations? Of course. Social media makes us believe things can be perfect. They aren’t. It’s what you make of it thats most important. Will we remember the trip for the fabulous food? Nope but we definitely will laugh about how we survived the stomach bug.