A Rocky Start

Our first 24 hours in St. Augustine were not the beginnings of a laid back family vacation.

It started with something small. About two hours after leaving the house, while we were still driving, I realized I left my computer at home. I was hoping to blog about our trip and get a few things for work done while I had extra time on my hands. I tried to take it as a sign that blogging and work could wait. This was a vacation after all.

Later that night, after we arrived in St. Augustine, the little boy was crawling into bed when he found a nice surprise in the shape of a lizard on his pillow. The hubby, little boy and I spent the next 25 minutes trying to no avail to trap the lizard. In the end, the hubby pulled the mattress out of the bedroom and plopped it on the floor in another room. Again, nothing big. No catastrophe. The little boy thought it was fun looking for, finding and then not being able to catch the lizard. He just didn't want to sleep in the same room with it.

The next morning it continued when baby girl took my blush case and smashed it on the floor. She loves doing this, so much so that a few weeks before she did the same thing and the powder crumbled to pieces. Maybe letting her play with the case on the carpet in a vacation rental home wasn't the best way to occupy her time. All those crumbled pieces went spilling out onto, or should I say into, the carpet. We scrubbed and scrubbed and were able to dim the huge spots of Nars peach blush, but they were still noticeable. I'm keeping my fingers crossed we won't be receiving a bill for carpet cleaning.

A few hours after this it got worse. Much worse while the little boy and I walked on the nearby beach.

This Gulf-Coast girl is clueless about the Atlantic. In my ignorance, we both took our shoes off and walked around by these:

Barnacles and oyster shells were scattered all along the shore. You think it would have crossed my mind they could be sharp and dangerous.

Nope.

I was chatting away with a local girl about restaurants when I peered down and noticed what looked like blood on a rock in front of me. I quickly spun around, but the little boy seemed content and kept walking along as if everything was fine.

I resumed the conversation, and when I looked down again, in a different spot this time, I saw more blood.

I knew he'd cut his foot. I just wasn't prepared for the site that met my eyes.

I scooped him up and made a beeline across the parking lot to the park where my husband was sitting with our sleeping baby girl. I don't think I said anything to the girl I was chatting with. I just took off.

The hubby immediately had the good sense to take him to a coast guard booth nearby where they cleaned his foot. Luckily, the cut wasn't as deep as it initially looked.

After he had cried it out, the little boy sat down on a bench with the hubby while baby girl and I went to retrieve our shoes. Another mother was warning her girls about the sharpness of the oyster shells. When I told her that my little boy had just cut his foot, she told me of how dirty and full of bacteria the oyster shells were.

If I haven't said it before let me say it now. I am a worrier. I freak out over little things. So this tidbit of information was not exactly the best thing for me to here. Needless to say I've spent a lot of time cleaning, doctoring and staring at that foot.

You might think things went downhill fast after that, but the rest of the trip was actually fun. I'll be posting about all the good stuff, and there was lots of it, the rest of the week!